https://www.macinstruct.com/Recent content on MacinstructHugo -- gohugo.ioen-usFri, 06 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-add-another-fingerprint-to-touch-id-on-your-iphone/Fri, 06 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-add-another-fingerprint-to-touch-id-on-your-iphone/Entry-level iPhones and older iPhones use Touch ID, a feature that allows you to use your fingerprint for authentication. Instead of typing a password to log in, you can press your finger on the home button to verify your identity. Did you know that you can add another fingerprint to Touch ID on your iPhone? There are several reasons you might want to do this. Maybe you want to start authenticating with your pointer finger instead of your thumb.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-force-your-macbooks-battery-to-fully-charge/Wed, 13 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-force-your-macbooks-battery-to-fully-charge/Your MacBook ships with a setting called optimized battery charging. This setting is enabled by default and helps your MacBook optimize battery charging and usage. Optimized battery charging helps preserve your MacBook’s battery life, but it also tends to keep your battery charged at 80% capacity. That’s a problem if you’re planning to unplug your MacBook and use it on battery power. Fortunately, there’s a way to temporarily disable this feature and force your MacBook to fully charge the battery.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-put-your-macbook-in-low-power-mode/Thu, 31 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-put-your-macbook-in-low-power-mode/When you’re away from home and using your MacBook away from an outlet, you’ll want to conserve as much power as possible to keep using your MacBook for as long as possible. You can enable your Mac’s low power mode feature to help automatically conserve power. When this feature is enabled, your Mac will make several adjustments behind the scenes to reduce power consumption. We recommend enabling this setting when flying on an airplane, working at a cafe, or doing any other activities that require you to be away from an a power outlet for an extended period of time.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-wifi-calling-on-your-iphone/Tue, 29 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-wifi-calling-on-your-iphone/Most iPhones come with the WiFi Calling feature enabled by default. This feature allows you to make and receive phone calls using your wireless network instead of your service provider’s cellular network. Unfortunately, the quality of your phone calls may suffer if the WiFi Calling feature is enabled. You can try disabling the feature to improve call quality. Here’s how to disable the WiFi Calling feature on your iPhone: From your iPhone’s home screen, tap Settings.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-share-your-ipads-location/Sat, 05 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-share-your-ipads-location/You own an iPad and you need to let someone know where you are. What do you do? Using built-in features on your iPad, you can share your location with family and friends. The Find My app on your iPad allows you to share your iPad’s location with anyone, whether you have previously shared your location with them or not. Here’s how to share your iPad’s location with family and friends:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-locate-your-iphone-on-a-map/Fri, 04 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-locate-your-iphone-on-a-map/Did you lose your iPhone? If you enabled Find My iPhone, there’s no need to worry. As long as the iPhone is turned on and connected to a cellular or wireless network, you can access a map that pinpoints its exact location. This should be the primary tool in your recovery arsenal, whether you left your iPhone under a couch cushion or on a table at the neighborhood cafe. Here’s how to locate your iPhone on a map:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-find-my-iphone/Tue, 01 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-find-my-iphone/The iPhone is nothing if not portable. You can carry it with you and use it just about anywhere. It’s great for communicating with others and doing work in cafes, airports, and at the office. But the iPhone’s portability also poses a serious problem: It’s easy to misplace! Apple saw this coming. They created a free utility called Find My iPhone that can detect the location of a lost iPhone with great accuracy, assuming it’s turned on and connected to the internet.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-share-your-iphones-location/Sun, 27 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-share-your-iphones-location/You own an iPhone and you need to let someone know where you are. What do you do? Using built-in features on your iPhone, you can share your location with family and friends. The Find My app on your iPhone allows you to share your iPhone’s location with anyone, whether you have previously shared your location with them or not. Here’s how to share your iPhone’s location with family and friends:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-set-chrome-as-the-default-web-browser-on-mac/Sat, 19 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-set-chrome-as-the-default-web-browser-on-mac/All new Macs are set to use the Safari web browser by default. If you’d prefer to use Chrome as your default web browser, you can change the default web browser on your Mac in a few easy steps. Setting Chrome as the default web browser tells your Mac to open Chrome when you click links in other applications, like the Mail or Calendar application. Here’s how to set Chrome as the default web browser on your Mac:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-apple-pay-in-safari-for-mac/Fri, 18 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-apple-pay-in-safari-for-mac/Apple Pay has revolutionized how people pay for physical and digital goods. With a couple taps of your finger, you can effortlessly pay for virtually anything. Most people associate Apple Pay with their iPhone or Apple Watch, but you can also use Apple Pay on your Mac if you use the Safari web browser. Many websites, like Etsy, support Apple Pay as a checkout method — in many cases you don’t even have to sign in to the website to make a purchase.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-on-sound-check-in-apple-music-for-mac/Tue, 15 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-on-sound-check-in-apple-music-for-mac/Apple Music for Mac provides a sound check feature that automatically adjusts the playback volume of all your songs to the same level. The sound check feature makes the volume more consistent as you play through a variety of songs, meaning that the music will automatically be adjusted so it won’t play too loud or soft. This is a useful feature for people who are tired of adjusting the volume every time a new song starts playing.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-off-sound-check-in-apple-music-for-mac/Mon, 14 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-off-sound-check-in-apple-music-for-mac/Apple Music for Mac provides a sound check feature that automatically adjusts the playback volume of all your songs to the same level. This setting is enabled by default on some Macs. While the sound check feature has benefits, like making the volume more consistent as you play through a variety of songs, it can also have drawbacks. For example, sound check might make the volume of some songs abnormally soft while making others too loud.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-the-back-of-your-iphone-as-a-button/Sat, 12 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-the-back-of-your-iphone-as-a-button/Did you know you can use the back of your iPhone as a button? By enabling an accessibility feature called Back Tap on your iPhone, you can! You can specify actions you’d like to occur when you double and triple-tap the back of your iPhone. This can be handy if you need a shortcut to an app or action you commonly perform on your iPhone. For example, you can use Back Tap to use your camera, turn the flashlight on and off, and open the app switcher.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-add-another-fingerprint-to-touch-id-on-your-ipad/Thu, 10 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-add-another-fingerprint-to-touch-id-on-your-ipad/Newer iPads use Touch ID, a feature that allows you to use your fingerprint for authentication. Instead of typing a password to log in, you can press your finger on the home button to verify your identity. Did you know that you can add another fingerprint to Touch ID? There are several reasons you might want to do this. Maybe you want to start authenticating with your pointer finger instead of your thumb.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/prioritize-wireless-networks-for-your-mac/Wed, 09 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/prioritize-wireless-networks-for-your-mac/When you connect your Mac to a wi-fi network, your Mac remembers that network and will automatically attempt to connect to it in the future. This is a great feature for wi-fi networks you trust and use frequently. But sometimes your Mac will connect to the wrong wireless network. This is because your Mac maintains a prioritized list of wi-fi networks and tries to connect to networks that have a higher priority.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-add-another-fingerprint-to-touch-id-on-your-mac/Tue, 08 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-add-another-fingerprint-to-touch-id-on-your-mac/Newer MacBooks and Apple keyboards have a button in the top-right corner referred to as Touch ID. This feature allows you to use your fingerprint for authentication. Instead of typing a password to log in, you can press your finger on Touch ID to verify your identity. Did you know that you can add another fingerprint to Touch ID? There are several reasons you might want to do this. Maybe you want to start authenticating with your pointer finger instead of your thumb.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-sync-contacts-across-your-apple-devices/Thu, 03 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-sync-contacts-across-your-apple-devices/The Contacts application that comes with Macs, iPads, and iPhones is useful for keeping track of friends and family. We previously discussed how to add contacts to your iPhone, add contacts to your iPad, and add contacts to your Mac. Now you’re ready for the final step: Using iCloud to sync contacts across all of your Apple devices. When you use iCloud to sync contacts, all of the contacts you’ve saved on one device automatically become available on all of your devices.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-add-a-contact-to-your-mac/Wed, 02 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-add-a-contact-to-your-mac/Your Mac is a power computer capable of doing all sorts of stuff — surfing the web, playing games, and even creating websites and applications. But your Mac can also help with the little things, like staying in contact with friends and family. By using the Contacts application, you can save the phone number and address of a friend or family member by adding them as a contact to your Mac.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-add-a-contact-to-your-ipad/Tue, 01 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-add-a-contact-to-your-ipad/iPads are handy for all sorts of stuff — surfing the web, playing games, and staying in contact with friends and family. You can save the phone number and address of a friend or family member by adding them as a contact to your iPad. Adding a person as a contact has many advantages. You’ll be able to call or message your contact quickly, and you’ll also be able to keep track of their personal information, like their birthday.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-touch-id-on-your-mac/Sun, 30 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-touch-id-on-your-mac/Newer MacBooks and Apple keyboards have a button in the top-right corner referred to as Touch ID. This feature allows you to use your fingerprint for authentication. Instead of typing a password to log in, you can press your finger on Touch ID to verify your identity. Most people want to use Touch ID on their Mac. If you’d prefer to use your fingerprint to authenticate, follow the steps in this tutorial to enable Touch ID on your Mac.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-off-touch-id-on-your-mac/Thu, 27 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-off-touch-id-on-your-mac/Newer MacBooks and Apple keyboards have a button in the top-right corner referred to as Touch ID. This feature allows you to use your fingerprint for authentication. Instead of typing a password to log in, you can press your finger on Touch ID to verify your identity. Some people don’t want to use Touch ID on their Mac. If you’d prefer to use a password to authenticate, follow the steps in this tutorial to disable Touch ID on your Mac.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-add-a-contact-to-your-iphone/Mon, 24 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-add-a-contact-to-your-iphone/iPhones are handy for all sorts of stuff — surfing the web, playing games, and staying in contact with friends and family. You can save the phone number and address of a friend or family member by adding them as a contact to your iPhone. Adding a person as a contact has many advantages. You’ll be able to call or message your contact quickly, and you’ll be able to add them as an emergency contact using the Emergency SOS feature.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-touch-id-for-purchases-on-your-mac/Sun, 23 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-touch-id-for-purchases-on-your-mac/Newer MacBooks and Apple keyboards have a button in the top-right corner referred to as Touch ID. This feature allows you to use your fingerprint for authentication. Instead of typing a password to log in, you can press your finger on Touch ID to verify your identity. You can use Touch ID to log in to your Mac, and you can also use Touch ID to make purchases from the App Store, Apple TV, and Apple Music.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-default-search-engine-on-chrome-for-mac/Sat, 22 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-default-search-engine-on-chrome-for-mac/If you use Google’s Chrome web browser on your Mac, you can quickly and easily change your Mac’s default search engine from Google to another search engine like DuckDuckGo or Ecosia. Here’s how to change the default search engine on the Chrome web browser on your Mac: Open the Chrome web browser. From the Chrome menu, select Preferences. From the side bar, click Search engine. The Chrome search engine preferences appear, as shown below.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-private-relay-on-your-mac/Wed, 19 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-private-relay-on-your-mac/When you surf the internet with your Mac, your personal information is collected at several points along the way. For example, if you visit nytimes.com, the New York Times web server can log your Mac’s IP address and user agent (Mac), among other technical details that could be used to identify you. That data can be used to track you around the internet and deliver customized advertisements. Understanding How Private Relay Works Apple’s Private Relay feature — new in macOS Monterey and available to iCloud+ subscribers — helps obscure those technical details when using the Safari web browser.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-double-space-apple-pages-documents/Wed, 12 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-double-space-apple-pages-documents/If you use Apple Pages for Mac, you’re already familiar with Apple’s word processing application. Depending on who you’re creating the document for, you may have to double space your document. Many organizations such as schools and legal entities have very strict guidelines regarding the line spacing of documents. Here’s how to change the line spacing of an Apple Pages for Mac document to add double spacing: Open Pages on your Mac, and then create a new document.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-margins-in-a-pages-document/Sun, 09 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-margins-in-a-pages-document/Creating a document in Apple Pages for Mac? Depending on who you’re creating the document for, you may have to change the document’s margins. Many organizations such as schools and legal entities have very strict guidelines regarding the margins. Here’s how to change the margins in a Apple Pages document on your Mac: Open the Pages application on your Mac, and then create a new document. Click the Document icon at the top of the window, as shown below.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-set-up-emergency-contacts-on-your-iphone/Wed, 05 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-set-up-emergency-contacts-on-your-iphone/If you own an iPhone, you should consider setting up emergency contacts on your iPhone. The names and phone numbers of your emergency contacts can be accessed from the lock screen of your iPhone in the event of an emergency, giving emergency responders a way to contact your loved ones if you’re unable to do so. And when used in conjunction with the Emergency SOS feature, your emergency contacts will be notified if you ever activate Emergency SOS using your iPhone.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-block-ads-on-your-iphone/Thu, 16 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-block-ads-on-your-iphone/“How do I block ads on my iPhone?” It’s usually one of the first questions that new iPhone owners ask, and for good reason. Internet advertising helps content creators continue publishing content, but ads are everywhere and they’re annoying to look at. As it turns out, Apple has provided several tools that make it relatively easy to block ads on your iPhone, but you’ll need to do a bit of legwork to enable and customize the features.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-view-lyrics-in-apple-music-on-your-mac/Tue, 14 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-view-lyrics-in-apple-music-on-your-mac/If you use Apple Music on your Mac to listen to songs, you might be surprised to learn that you can view song lyrics right in the Apple Music application. Lyrics are available for most of the songs in Apple Music. Apple Music also has a feature that allows you to share lyrics with a friend, much like how it allows you to share a playlist with a friend. Here’s how to view lyrics in Apple Music on your Mac:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-imessage-for-your-phone-number/Sat, 11 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-imessage-for-your-phone-number/iMessage is Apple’s end-to-end encrypted instant messaging service that you can use to send text messages, photos, and more to other people who own Apple devices. If you’re switching from an iPhone to an Android phone, you’ll need to disable and deactivate iMessage permanently so it doesn’t interfere with your new phone. You can disable iMessage on your iPhone, but if you’ve already gotten rid of your iPhone, you’ll need to use Apple’s website to disable and deactivate iMessage for your phone number.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-your-phone-number-for-imessage-on-your-mac/Fri, 10 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-your-phone-number-for-imessage-on-your-mac/iMessage is Apple’s end-to-end encrypted instant messaging service that you can use to send text messages, photos, and more to other people who own Apple devices. You can add your phone number to the Messages application on your Mac to send and receive iMessages using your phone number. After you add your phone number, you’ll receive all iMessages sent to your phone number on your Mac. First, check that your phone number is enabled for iMessage on your iPhone:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-imessage-on-your-mac/Thu, 09 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-imessage-on-your-mac/iMessage is Apple’s end-to-end encrypted instant messaging service that you can use to send text messages, photos, and more to other people who own Apple devices. If you don’t want to use iMessage on your Mac, you can disable it. Disabling iMessage will prevent you from sending and receiving iMessages on your Mac. Here’s how to disable iMessage on your Mac: Open the Messages application on your Mac. From the Messages menu, select Preferences.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-imessage-on-your-ipad/Wed, 08 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-imessage-on-your-ipad/iMessage is Apple’s end-to-end encrypted instant messaging service that you can use to send text messages, photos, and more to other people who own Apple devices. If you don’t want to use iMessage on your iPad, you can disable it. Disabling iMessage will prevent you from sending and receiving iMessages on your iPad. But if your iPad has an active cellular service plan, you’ll still be able to send and receive SMS text messages if your plan supports it.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-disable-imessage-on-your-iphone/Tue, 07 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-disable-imessage-on-your-iphone/iMessage is Apple’s end-to-end encrypted instant messaging service that you can use to send text messages, photos, and more to other people who own Apple devices. If you don’t want to use iMessage on your iPhone, you can disable it. Disabling iMessage will prevent you from sending and receiving iMessages on your iPhone. But if your iPhone has an active cellular service plan, you’ll still be able to send and receive SMS text messages if your plan supports it.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-access-hidden-mac-networking-tools/Sun, 28 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-access-hidden-mac-networking-tools/Your Mac contains some of the best networking hardware in the industry, but things can still go wrong. If you find that your wireless network connection is on the fritz, you may need to perform some troubleshooting. We talked previously about the networkquality command line tool, and that’s great for what it does, but you may need something else if you need to investigate problems with your wireless network. That’s where your Mac’s hidden network tools come in!https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-your-macs-network-quality/Wed, 24 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-your-macs-network-quality/You’ve probably heard of Speedtest and Fast.com, two free tools you can use to check your network connection. But did you know that your Mac comes with a command line utility that allows you to check your Mac’s network quality, right from the Terminal application? The networkquality tool is included with every Mac running macOS 12 and later. This tool provides a variety of stats about your network connection and can help you benchmark your network throughout the day.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-page-up-and-page-down-on-your-mac/Mon, 15 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-page-up-and-page-down-on-your-mac/One of the staples of PC keyboards is the Page Up and Page Down keys. Pressing these keys will make the focus of the screen quickly jump a full page up or down — it’s a quick way to scroll through a document or a website. Your Mac doesn’t have a dedicated keys for page up or page down, but there is a keyboard shortcut equivalent you can use. To page up on your Mac, press the fn and up arrow keys, as shown below.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-show-hidden-files-on-your-mac/Thu, 11 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-show-hidden-files-on-your-mac/You wouldn’t know it by using the Finder, but your Mac has thousands of hidden files that can’t be found or accessed using conventional methods, like opening a folder or searching with Spotlight. Most of these secret files are hidden from view to protect you. Apple doesn’t want new users poking around in, say, the /sbin directory, because there’s no real reason why they would need to access it. But power users may want to see all of the files on their Mac, for whatever reason.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-automatically-delete-old-messages-on-your-mac/Wed, 10 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-automatically-delete-old-messages-on-your-mac/iMessage allows you to send and receive free SMS and text messages to your friends and family. But those old text messages can start piling up! After a while, all of the old text messages can start cluttering the Messages application on your Mac, making it difficult to find the text message threads you’re really interested in. Thankfully, your Mac contains a feature that can automatically delete old text messages after a certain period of time.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-view-lyrics-in-apple-music-on-your-ipad/Wed, 10 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-view-lyrics-in-apple-music-on-your-ipad/If you use Apple Music on your iPad to listen to songs, you might be surprised to learn that you can view song lyrics right in the Apple Music application. Lyrics are available for most of the songs in Apple Music. Apple Music also has a feature that allows you to share lyrics with a friend, much like how it allows you to share a playlist with a friend. Here’s how to view lyrics in Apple Music on your iPad:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-set-default-apps-on-your-mac/Mon, 08 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-set-default-apps-on-your-mac/Your Mac has a default application that it uses to open all files of a certain type (like images and Markdown files), and it remembers to use that application every time you open one of those files. For example, your Mac uses the Preview application to open files with the .png extension. If you’d like to change the default application for a file type, you’re in luck — your Mac provides a quick and easy way to change the default application for a file type.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-siri-voice-on-ipad/Sun, 07 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-siri-voice-on-ipad/Siri is Apple’s virtual voice assistant that you can verbally communicate with. Freely available on all of Apple’s devices, including the iPad, Siri can help you do things like find information, add calendar events, and send email. Siri comes with a default voice, but if you don’t like that voice, you can select one of the other voices for Siri that are available on your iPad. Here’s how to change the Siri voice on your iPad:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-scan-text-using-your-ipads-camera/Sun, 07 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-scan-text-using-your-ipads-camera/If you have an iPad running iPadOS 15 or later, you might be able use the Live Text feature to scan text in photos. After you scan the text, you can paste it into a different application, such as Notes or Mail. This is a great way to record text off receipts, copy a friend’s written notes, or scan a page from a book. Here’s how to scan text using your iPad’s camera:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-remotely-lock-your-ipad/Fri, 05 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-remotely-lock-your-ipad/You already know that you can password protect your iPad. But if you have enabled Find My iPad, you can also remotely lock your iPad. (The iPad must be turned on and connected to a cellular or wireless network.) By using the Mark As Lost feature, you can enable a password on your iPad if one isn’t already set. Mark As Lost also disables several features that could be used if your iPad is stolen.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-scan-a-qr-code-with-your-ipad/Mon, 01 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-scan-a-qr-code-with-your-ipad/Quick Response (QR) codes are everywhere. These codes provide easy access to text and websites, but you have to scan the QR codes first to visit the see the text or visit the website. You can scan QR codes with your iPad to reveal the text or website address. Here’s how to scan a QR code with your iPad: From the home screen, open the Camera app. Point your iPad’s camera at the QR code, as shown below.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-scan-a-qr-code-with-your-iphone/Mon, 01 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-scan-a-qr-code-with-your-iphone/Quick Response (QR) codes are everywhere. These codes provide easy access to text and websites, but you have to scan the QR codes first to visit the see the text or visit the website. You can scan QR codes with your iPhone to reveal the text or website address. Here’s how to scan a QR code with your iPhone: From the home screen, open the Camera app. Point your iPhone’s camera at the QR code, as shown below.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-locate-your-ipad-on-a-map/Sun, 31 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-locate-your-ipad-on-a-map/Did you lose your iPad? If you enabled Find My iPad, there’s no need to worry. As long as the iPad is turned on and connected to a cellular or wireless network, you can access a map that pinpoints its exact location. This should be the primary tool in your recovery arsenal, whether you left your iPad under a couch cushion or on a table at the neighborhood cafe. Here’s how to locate your iPad on a map:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-find-my-ipad/Sat, 30 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-find-my-ipad/The iPad is nothing if not portable. You can carry it with you and use it just about anywhere. It’s great for doing work in cafes, airports, or even at the office. But the iPad’s portability also poses a serious problem: It’s easy to misplace! Apple saw this coming. They created a free utility called Find My iPad that can detect the location of a lost iPad with great accuracy, assuming it’s turned on and connected to the internet.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-delete-apps-on-your-ipad/Fri, 29 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-delete-apps-on-your-ipad/It’s easy to install and update apps on your iPad. Removing applications from your iPad is just as easy. This tutorial will show you how to do it.  Tip: When you delete an app on your iPad, you also delete all of the information related to the application. For example, if you delete a game, all of the saved games will also be deleted. Here’s how to delete apps on your iPad:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/tell-your-mac-to-forget-a-wireless-network/Fri, 29 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/tell-your-mac-to-forget-a-wireless-network/When you connect a Mac to a wi-fi network, the Mac remembers that network and will automatically attempt to connect to it in the future. This is a great feature for wi-fi networks you trust and use frequently. But mistakes happen. If you connect to the wrong network at a coffee shop, your Mac will automatically attempt to join that network every time you visit the coffee shop in the future.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-scan-text-using-your-iphones-camera/Wed, 27 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-scan-text-using-your-iphones-camera/If you have an iPhone running iOS 15 or later, you might be able use the Live Text feature to scan text in photos. After you scan the text, you can paste it into a different application, such as Notes or Mail. This is a great way to record text off receipts, copy a friend’s written notes, or scan a page from a book. Here’s how to scan text using your iPhone’s camera:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-siri-voice-on-mac/Wed, 20 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-siri-voice-on-mac/Siri is Apple’s virtual voice assistant that you can verbally communicate with. Freely available on all of Apple’s devices, including the Mac, Siri can help you do things like find information, add calendar events, and send email. Siri comes with a default voice, but if you don’t like that voice, you can select one of the other voices for Siri that are available on your Mac. Here’s how to change the Siri voice on your Mac:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-and-activate-siri-on-your-mac/Sun, 17 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-and-activate-siri-on-your-mac/Siri is Apple’s virtual voice assistant. Freely available on all of Apple’s devices, including Macs, Siri can help you find information, add calendar events, and send email. Enabling Siri is a breeze, as is activating it to listen to your voice commands. Enabling Siri on Your Mac Here’s how to enable Siri on your Mac: From the Apple menu, select System Preferences. Click Siri. Select the Enable Ask Siri setting.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-siri-voice-on-iphone/Wed, 06 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-siri-voice-on-iphone/Siri is Apple’s virtual voice assistant that you can verbally communicate with. Freely available on all of Apple’s devices, including the iPhone, Siri can help you do things like find information, add calendar events, and send email. Siri comes with a default voice, but if you don’t like that voice, you can select one of the other voices for Siri that are available on your iPhone. Here’s how to change the Siri voice on your iPhone:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-siri-on-an-ipad/Mon, 04 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-siri-on-an-ipad/Siri is Apple’s virtual voice assistant. Freely available on all of Apple’s devices, including the iPad, Siri can help you do things like find information, add calendar events, and send email. Siri is not enabled on your iPad by default — you have to activate it. This guide shows you how to enable and activate Siri on your iPad. Here’s how to enable Siri on your iPad: From the iPad’s home screen, tap Settings.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-activate-siri-on-your-iphone/Sat, 02 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-activate-siri-on-your-iphone/Siri is Apple’s virtual voice assistant. Freely available on all of Apple’s devices, including iPhones, Siri can help you do things like find information, add calendar events, and send email. Siri is not enabled on your iPhone by default — you have to activate it. This guide shows you how to enable and activate Siri on your iPhone. Here’s how to activate Siri on your iPhone: From the iPhone’s home screen, tap Settings.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-automatically-delete-old-messages-on-your-ipad/Wed, 29 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-automatically-delete-old-messages-on-your-ipad/iMessage allows you to send and receive free SMS and text messages to your friends and family. But those old text messages can start piling up! After a while, all of the old text messages can start cluttering your iPad, making it difficult to find the text message threads you’re really interested in. Thankfully, your iPad contains a feature that can automatically delete old text messages after a certain period of time.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-download-music-to-your-ipad/Mon, 27 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-download-music-to-your-ipad/If you use the Apple Music streaming service to listen to music on your iPad, you may be interested in learning that there’s a way to download that music to your iPad for offline listening. Downloading music to your iPad might be useful if you live in a place with spotty cellular coverage, or if you’re planning to fly somewhere with your iPad in airplane mode. Here’s how to download music to your iPad:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/show-only-downloaded-music-on-your-ipad/Mon, 27 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/show-only-downloaded-music-on-your-ipad/I use Apple Music and I love it. Being able to stream and download music to an iPad over a wireless or cellular connection is priceless. But there is one time when I don’t want to stream music at all: when I’m using my iPad in airplane mode or when I’m in an area with no cellular or wireless connectivity. That’s because Apple Music displays all of my music in one big list, and I can’t tell which music is downloaded to my iPad - that’s the music I can play without network connectivity - and which music that is currently stored on Apple’s servers - that’s the music I can’t play without network connectivity.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-automatically-delete-old-messages-on-your-iphone/Sat, 25 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-automatically-delete-old-messages-on-your-iphone/iMessage allows you to send and receive free SMS and text messages to your friends and family. But those old text messages can start piling up! After a while, all of the old text messages can start cluttering your iPhone, making it difficult to find the text message threads you’re really interested in. Thankfully, your iPhone contains a feature that can automatically delete old text messages after a certain period of time.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-private-relay-on-your-ipad/Sat, 25 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-private-relay-on-your-ipad/When you surf the internet with your iPad, your personal information is collected at several points along the way. For example, if you visit nytimes.com, the New York Times web server can log your iPad’s IP address and user agent (iPad), among other technical details that could be used to identify you. That data can be used to track you around the internet and deliver customized advertisements. Understanding How Private Relay Works Apple’s Private Relay feature — new in iPadOS 15 and available to iCloud+ subscribers — helps obscure those technical details when using the Safari web browser.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/move-safaris-address-bar-to-top-on-your-iphone/Thu, 23 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/move-safaris-address-bar-to-top-on-your-iphone/One of the more dramatic changes in iOS 15 is in the Safari web browser: The address bar moved from the top to the bottom of the screen. But worry not! If you’d like to move Safari’s address bar back to the top of the screen, Apple has given you a setting to do just that. Here’s how to move Safari’s address bar to the top of the screen on your iPhone:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-private-relay-on-your-iphone/Tue, 21 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-private-relay-on-your-iphone/When you surf the internet with your iPhone, your personal information is collected at several points along the way. For example, if you visit nytimes.com, the New York Times web server can log your iPhone’s IP address and user agent (iPhone), among other technical details that could be used to identify you. That data can be used to track you around the internet and deliver customized advertisements. Understanding How Private Relay Works Apple’s Private Relay feature — new in iOS 15 and available to iCloud+ subscribers — helps obscure those technical details when using the Safari web browser.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-tor-browser-on-a-mac/Sat, 18 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-tor-browser-on-a-mac/Practically everything you do online with your Mac is logged and traceable back to your computer. Law enforcement officials, internet service providers, and even website administrators can find out what internet services and resources you accessed, when you accessed them, and what computer you used to access them with. If this lack of privacy sends shivers down your spine, you’ll be happy to hear that there is a way to preserve your anonymity on the internet while using your Mac.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-download-an-image-to-an-ipad/Sat, 11 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-download-an-image-to-an-ipad/Downloading an image from a website to your iPad is an easy to way to save the pictures your friends post on Facebook or any other photo you discover on the internet. If you use iCloud to sync your photos, the saved images will instantly be available on all of your other Apple devices. The process is easy, and takes only a second. Here’s how to download images to your iPad:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-share-an-apple-music-playlist-on-an-ipad/Sat, 11 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-share-an-apple-music-playlist-on-an-ipad/If you use Apple Music on an iPad, you should know that there’s a quick and easy way to share your playlists with friends and family members. Sharing a playlist lets others see your music and play the songs that you’ve collected. Here’s how to share an Apple Music playlist on your iPad: From the home screen, tap the Music application. Select the playlist you want to share. Tap the … icon in the top right corner, as shown below.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-blur-private-information-in-screenshots/Fri, 10 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-blur-private-information-in-screenshots/If you take screenshots on your Mac, you may need to blur out or redact private information in the screenshot so that it’s not visible. Phone numbers, names, and email addresses are all examples of personal and private information that should be hidden in public screenshots. The Preview application on your Mac doesn’t provide an easy way of doing this. Your only options in the Preview application are cutting out the private information or pasting a white box over it.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-off-read-receipts-on-your-ipad/Fri, 10 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-off-read-receipts-on-your-ipad/Your iPad has the ability to show others when you read their text messages. This feature, known as read receipts, provides visual confirmation in the Messages app that you’ve read someone’s text message. The image below gives you a sense of what read receipts look like from the other person’s perspective. If you don’t want people to know when you’ve read a message, you can turn off the read receipts feature on your iPad.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-off-read-receipts-on-your-mac/Fri, 10 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-off-read-receipts-on-your-mac/Your Mac has the ability to show others when you read their text messages. This feature, known as read receipts, provides visual confirmation in the Messages app that you’ve read someone’s text message. The image below gives you a sense of what read receipts look like from the other person’s perspective. If you don’t want people to know when you’ve read a message, you can turn off the read receipts feature on your Mac.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-close-all-windows-in-a-mac-application/Thu, 09 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-close-all-windows-in-a-mac-application/When you’re working in the Finder or a Mac application, the open windows can start to pile up. The Preview application is my personal favorite. When working on Macinstruct or taking screenshots for documentation, I can easily end the day with hundreds of windows open in the Preview application. Fortunately, there’s a quick and easy way to close all of the windows in Mac application at once, without having to close each window one by one.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-off-read-receipts-on-your-iphone/Thu, 09 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-off-read-receipts-on-your-iphone/Your iPhone has the ability to show others when you read their text messages. This feature, known as read receipts, provides visual confirmation in the Messages app that you’ve read someone’s text message. The image below gives you a sense of what read receipts look like from the other person’s perspective. If you don’t want people to know when you’ve read a message, you can turn off the read receipts feature on your iPhone.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-sync-imessages-across-your-apple-devices/Wed, 08 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-sync-imessages-across-your-apple-devices/iMessage is Apple’s end-to-end encrypted instant messaging service that you can use to send text messages, photos, and more to other people who own Apple devices. You can turn on an iCloud feature to synchronize your iMessages across all of your devices. That way, when you send or receive an iMessage, that message will be viewable on all of your Apple devices. Here’s how to set up your iPhone or iPad to sync iMessages across your other Apple devices:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/protecting-your-privacy-while-using-apple-devices/Sun, 05 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/protecting-your-privacy-while-using-apple-devices/Macinstruct has been a strong advocate of Apple and its products for over twenty years. Unfortunately, some of Apple’s recent design decisions have undermined our faith in Apple’s commitment to privacy. We’re now encouraging readers to protect their privacy by disabling certain Apple features. In situations where privacy is a hard requirement, it may be necessary to consider using non-Apple hardware and software. This article provides an overview of our recommendations and your options.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-read-kindle-books-on-a-mac/Sat, 04 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-read-kindle-books-on-a-mac/Amazon’s Kindle devices have become synonymous with ebooks. But did you know that there’s also a way to read Kindle books on a Mac? With the free Kindle application for Mac, you can read all of your Kindle books on your Mac — for free. Here’s how to read Kindle books on a Mac: Download and install the free Kindle app for Mac. It’s available from Apple’s App Store. Open the Kindle app on your Mac.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/see-how-much-ram-is-installed-in-your-mac/Sat, 04 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/see-how-much-ram-is-installed-in-your-mac/Do you know how much RAM is installed in your Mac? You should. RAM, or random access memory, stores the code and instructions for macOS and any applications open on your Mac. The more RAM you have, the more applications you can have open at once. Knowing how much RAM you have installed in your Mac is an important piece of information that could change how you use your computer.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-which-version-of-ipados-your-ipad-is-using/Fri, 03 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-which-version-of-ipados-your-ipad-is-using/All iPads come with the iPadOS operating system preinstalled, but depending on how you have your settings configured, your iPad may have an older version of iPadOS installed. Fortunately, it’s quick and easy to check which version of iPadOS is installed on your iPad. Here’s how to check which version of iPadOS your iPad is using: From the home screen, tap Settings. Tap General. Tap About, as shown below. The version of iPadOS installed on your iPad is shown on the Software Version line, as shown below.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-save-pdf-files-on-an-ipad/Thu, 02 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-save-pdf-files-on-an-ipad/You probably know that you can read PDF documents on your iPad, but did you know that you can also save PDF files to the Books app on your iPad? This is useful for saving free ebooks in PDF file format from websites like Open Library. You also can save anything from bank statements and college course syllabi to scanned documents and tenant agreements. It’s not a stretch to say that your iPad could become a portable document management system!https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-read-kindle-books-on-an-iphone/Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-read-kindle-books-on-an-iphone/Amazon’s Kindle devices have become synonymous with ebooks. But did you know that there’s also a way to read Kindle books on an iPhone? With the free Kindle application for iPhone, you can read all of your Kindle books on your iPhone — for free. Here’s how to read Kindle books on an iPhone: Download and install the free Kindle app for iPhone. It’s available from Apple’s App Store. Open the Kindle app on your iPhone.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-which-version-of-ios-your-iphone-is-using/Tue, 31 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-which-version-of-ios-your-iphone-is-using/All iPhones come with the iOS operating system preinstalled, but depending on how you have your settings configured, your iPhone may have an older version of iOS installed. Fortunately, it’s quick and easy to check which version of iOS is installed on your iPhone. Here’s how to check which version of iOS your iPhone is using: From the home screen, tap Settings. Tap General, as shown below. Tap About, as shown below.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-right-click-on-a-mac/Mon, 30 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-right-click-on-a-mac/Think you can’t right click while using a Mac? Let’s dispel that common rumor right away: You can right click on a Mac! Don’t let the single trackpad and mouse button fool you. Both the MacBook trackpad and Apple mouse can be configured to right click. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to right click on a Mac. What Right Clicking on a Mac Does If you have a Mac and you haven’t been right clicking, you’ve been missing out on a lot of cool functionality.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-which-version-of-macos-your-mac-is-using/Sun, 29 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-which-version-of-macos-your-mac-is-using/All Macs come with the macOS operating system preinstalled, but depending on how you have your system settings configured, your Mac may have an older version of macOS installed. Fortunately, it’s quick and easy to check which version of macOS is installed on your Mac. Here’s how to check which version of macOS your Mac is using: From the Apple menu, select About This Mac, as shown below. The version of macOS installed on your computer is shown in the window, as shown below.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-backup-your-ipad-to-icloud/Sat, 28 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-backup-your-ipad-to-icloud/iCloud provides an easy way for you to back up your iPad to iCloud. Enable this feature, and your iPad will automatically create a copy of the information stored on your iPad and upload it to Apple’s cloud servers. If you ever lose your iPad or purchase a new iPad, you can use the iCloud backup to restore the backup to the new iPad.  Warning: If you enable this feature, Apple can decrypt your backup and provide the contents to law enforcement.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-on-emergency-sos-on-your-iphone/Tue, 24 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-on-emergency-sos-on-your-iphone/The Emergency SOS feature on your iPhone is designed to help you quickly contact emergency services and loved ones. You can initiate the call by pressing and holding the power button and one of the volume buttons. This feature is designed for emergency situations when you need to call emergency services but you don’t have the time to unlock your iPhone, open the Phone app, and dial a phone number.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-off-emergency-sos-on-your-iphone/Sat, 21 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-off-emergency-sos-on-your-iphone/The Emergency SOS feature on your iPhone is designed to help you quickly contact emergency services and loved ones. You can initiate the call by pressing and holding the power button and one of the volume buttons. But for some people, the Emergency SOS feature might be more of an inconvenience than anything. For example, if you have small children at home, you might discover that they can accidentally trigger Emergency SOS calls.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-add-page-numbers-to-an-apple-pages-document/Thu, 19 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-add-page-numbers-to-an-apple-pages-document/If you use Apple Pages for Mac, you’re already familiar with Apple’s word processing application. But depending on who you’re creating the document for, you may have to add page numbers. Many organizations such as schools and legal entities have very strict guidelines regarding the numbering of pages. Here’s how to add page numbers to an Apple Pages document document on your Mac: Open Pages on your Mac, and then create a new document.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-lossless-audio-on-your-ipad/Tue, 17 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-lossless-audio-on-your-ipad/Apple recently announced a feature that allows Apple Music subscribers to listen to lossless audio on their iPads. This is a free feature and improves the sound quality of the music you listen to. What is lossless audio? According to Apple: Most audio compression techniques lose some amount of data contained in the original source file. Lossless compression is a form of compression that preserves all of the original data.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-set-nano-as-the-default-editor-for-git-on-your-mac/Sun, 15 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-set-nano-as-the-default-editor-for-git-on-your-mac/If you’re a developer who uses git for version control on your Mac, you’ll want to set a default text editor for git. There are certain situations when git opens a text editor for you — for example, when you need to rebase or resolve merge conflicts. By default, git is set to use vim, but you can easily change git to use another text editor. Nano is a simple text editor and it makes a great choice for beginners or anyone who prefers a simpler text editor when working with git.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-your-ipad-as-a-second-monitor/Sat, 14 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-your-ipad-as-a-second-monitor/Using a second monitor with your Mac can really increase your productivity. Whether you use another monitor as a dedicated display for your web browser, text editor, or word processor, having a second monitor around can make a big difference. Thanks to Sidecar feature built in to macOS, you can use your iPad as a second monitor. You don’t even need to use any cables to connect them — it’s completely wireless!https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-erase-your-ipad/Wed, 11 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-erase-your-ipad/Are you considering selling your iPad or passing it down to a family member? You should erase your iPad before doing anything else. Erasing your iPad removes all of your apps, personal content, and settings and then resets your iPad to factory settings. Once you complete this process, the iPad can be set up from scratch, like a new iPad.  Tip: Before you erase your iPad, be sure to back it up to iCloud or a Mac.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-erase-your-iphone/Tue, 10 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-erase-your-iphone/Are you considering selling your iPhone or passing it down to a family member? You should erase your iPhone before doing anything else. Erasing your iPhone removes all of your apps, personal content, and settings and then resets your iPhone to factory settings. Once you complete this process, the iPhone can be set up from scratch, like a new iPhone.  Tip: Before you erase your iPhone, be sure to back it up to iCloud or a Mac.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-lossless-audio-on-your-mac/Sat, 07 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-lossless-audio-on-your-mac/Apple recently announced a feature that allows Apple Music subscribers to listen to lossless audio on their Macs. This is a free feature and improves the sound quality of the music you listen to. What is lossless audio? According to Apple: Most audio compression techniques lose some amount of data contained in the original source file. Lossless compression is a form of compression that preserves all of the original data.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-lossless-audio-on-your-iphone/Tue, 03 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-lossless-audio-on-your-iphone/Apple recently announced a feature that allows Apple Music subscribers to listen to lossless audio on their iPhones. This is a free feature and improves the sound quality of the music you listen to. What is lossless audio? According to Apple: Most audio compression techniques lose some amount of data contained in the original source file. Lossless compression is a form of compression that preserves all of the original data.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-view-lyrics-in-apple-music-on-your-iphone/Sun, 01 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-view-lyrics-in-apple-music-on-your-iphone/If you use Apple Music on your iPhone to listen to songs, you might be surprised to learn that you can view song lyrics right in the Apple Music application. Lyrics are available for most of the songs in Apple Music. Apple Music also has a feature that allows you to share lyrics with a friend, much like how it allows you to share a playlist with a friend. Here’s how to view lyrics in Apple Music on your iPhone:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-cancel-apple-tv/Sat, 31 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-cancel-apple-tv/Apple TV+ is Apple’s paid television service. Similar to other services like Netflix and Disney Plus, Apple TV is one of the newest streaming services that lets you watch original content on your Mac, iPhone, Apple TV, and other Apple devices. Since Apple TV is a subscription-based service, you will be billed for it monthly until you cancel your subscription. You can use your iPhone to cancel your Apple TV subscription at any time.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-an-iphone-in-airplane-mode/Tue, 27 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-an-iphone-in-airplane-mode/Flying somewhere with your iPhone? You may need to learn about an important iOS feature called Airplane Mode. Turn this setting on, and your iPhone may be compliant with regulations that prohibit the use of certain wireless technologies while the aircraft is flying. This tutorial provides a comprehensive look at Airplane Mode and how you can use an iPhone on an aircraft. What is Airplane Mode? When you enable Airplane Mode, your iPhone disconnects from any cellular and wireless networks and stops trying to automatically reconnect to those networks.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-an-ipad-in-airplane-mode/Sun, 25 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-an-ipad-in-airplane-mode/Flying somewhere with your iPad? You may need to learn about an important iOS feature called Airplane Mode. Turn this setting on, and your iPad may be compliant with regulations that prohibit the use of certain wireless technologies while the aircraft is flying. This tutorial provides a comprehensive look at Airplane Mode and how you can use an iPad on an aircraft. What is Airplane Mode? When you enable Airplane Mode, your iPad disconnects from any cellular and wireless networks and stops trying to automatically reconnect to those networks.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-set-file-permissions-on-a-mac/Sat, 24 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-set-file-permissions-on-a-mac/Your Mac uses permissions to restrict access to applications, files, and folders. Utilizing this security control can help protect your data from unauthorized access. Whether you use your Mac in public places or share it with other users, you may want to change the permissions on your documents to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of your data. Of course, it can be difficult to strike a balance between convenience and security when using permissions.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-your-iphones-storage/Thu, 22 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-your-iphones-storage/Your iPhone has a finite amount of storage space and when it’s gone, it’s gone. Fortunately, there’s a quick and easy way to check your iPhone’s total and available storage space. You can also use a feature built into your iPhone to see which apps are taking up the most space. The feature allows you to “offload” apps and delete them if necessary. Here’s how to check your iPhone’s storage space:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-download-music-to-your-iphone/Thu, 22 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-download-music-to-your-iphone/If you use the Apple Music streaming service to listen to music on your iPhone, you may be interested in learning that there’s a way to download that music to your iPhone for offline listening. Downloading music to your iPhone might be useful if you live in a place with spotty cellular coverage, or if you’re planning to fly somewhere with your iPhone in airplane mode. Here’s how to download music to your iPhone:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/show-only-downloaded-music-on-your-iphone/Wed, 21 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/show-only-downloaded-music-on-your-iphone/I use Apple Music and I love it. Being able to stream and download music to an iPhone over a wireless or cellular connection is priceless. But there is one time when I don’t want to stream music at all: when I’m using my iPhone in airplane mode or when I’m in an area with no cellular or wireless connectivity. That’s because Apple Music displays all of my music in one big list, and I can’t tell which music is downloaded to my iPhone - that’s the music I can play without network connectivity - and which music that is currently stored on Apple’s servers - that’s the music I can’t play without network connectivity.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-delete-apps-on-your-iphone/Thu, 06 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-delete-apps-on-your-iphone/It’s easy to install and update apps on your iPhone. Removing applications from your iPhone is just as easy. This tutorial will show you how to do it.  Tip: When you delete an app on your iPhone, you also delete all of the information related to the application. For example, if you delete a game, all of the saved games will also be deleted. Here’s how to delete apps on your iPhone:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-prevent-iphone-app-tracking/Wed, 05 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-prevent-iphone-app-tracking/Your iPhone includes a feature that can automatically prevent applications from tracking which websites you visit. This privacy feature should cut down on the number of targeted advertisements you see on websites. Correctly configuring this feature is a good way to boost your privacy while using your iPhone. Here’s how to prevent iPhone app tracking: From the iPhone home screen, tap Settings. Tap Privacy. Tap Tracking. Slide the Allow Apps to Request to Track switch to the off position.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-your-macs-serial-number/Tue, 04 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-your-macs-serial-number/Every Mac is assigned a unique serial number. This isn’t something you’ll need to know under normal circumstances, but if you ever need to check your AppleCare status or have Apple repair your Mac, you’ll need to provide them with your Mac’s serial number. Here’s how to find your Mac’s serial number: From the Apple menu, select About This Mac. Your Mac’s serial number is displayed in the window, as shown below.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-your-macbooks-battery-health/Sun, 02 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-your-macbooks-battery-health/If your MacBook’s battery life seems to be getting shorter and shorter, it might be time to check your MacBook’s battery health. All MacBooks ship with batteries that are designed to last for years, but depending on how you typically recharge your MacBook’s battery, the battery’s capacity can be reduced early leading to shorter battery life. Checking your MacBook’s battery health can help you keep an eye on things and make sure your MacBook’s battery isn’t defective.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-share-an-apple-music-playlist-on-an-iphone/Fri, 23 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-share-an-apple-music-playlist-on-an-iphone/If you use Apple Music on an iPhone, you should know that there’s a quick and easy way to share your playlists with friends and family members. Sharing a playlist lets others see your music and play the songs that you’ve collected. Here’s how to share an Apple Music playlist on your iPhone: From the home screen, tap the Music application. Select the playlist you want to share. Tap the … icon, as shown below.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-share-an-apple-music-playlist-on-a-mac/Wed, 21 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-share-an-apple-music-playlist-on-a-mac/If you use Apple Music, you should know that there’s a quick and easy way to share your playlists with friends and family members. Sharing a playlist lets others see your music and play the songs that you’ve collected. Here’s how to share an Apple Music playlist on your Mac: Open the Music application on your Mac. From the sidebar, select the playlist you want to share. Click the … button, as shown below, and then select an option from the Share menu.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-default-search-engine-on-safari-on-mac/Tue, 20 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-default-search-engine-on-safari-on-mac/If you use the Safari web browser on your Mac, you can quickly and easily change your Mac’s default search engine from Google to another search engine like DuckDuckGo or Ecosia. Here’s how to change the default search engine on your Mac: Open the Safari web browser. From the Safari menu, select Preferences. Click Search. The Safari search preferences appear, as shown below. From the Search engine menu, select the search engine you want use.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-add-bluetooth-menu-to-macs-menu-bar/Mon, 19 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-add-bluetooth-menu-to-macs-menu-bar/Your Mac has the ability to connect to Bluetooth devices, but it can be a pain to connect those devices. For quick and easy access to the Bluetooth settings, you can enable the Bluetooth menu in your Mac’s menu bar. The Bluetooth menu allows you to connect and disconnect Bluetooth devices with one click. Here’s how to add the Bluetooth menu to your Mac’s menu bar: From the Apple menu, select System Preferences.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-add-an-app-to-your-macs-dock/Fri, 16 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-add-an-app-to-your-macs-dock/Your Mac’s Dock is an application launcher that lets you quickly open applications and see at a glance which applications are already open. Your Mac automatically displays the icons of open applications on the Dock, and it also displays the icons applications that were put there by you (or Apple). You can add application icons to the Dock for easy access. Here’s how to add an application’s icon to your Mac’s Dock:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-software-optimized-for-m1-macs/Fri, 09 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-software-optimized-for-m1-macs/Newer Macs use Apple’s M1 processor, a giant upgrade in terms of performance and power consumption. Since this processor is substantially different from the previous Intel chips that were used, developers will need to essentially rewrite their applications to take advantage of the M1 processor. Applications that haven’t yet been rewritten for the M1 processor can run very slowly, so it’s important to find applications that run natively on the M1.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-your-ipads-serial-number/Thu, 08 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-your-ipads-serial-number/Every iPad is assigned a unique serial number. This isn’t something you’ll need to know under normal circumstances, but if you ever need to check your AppleCare status or have Apple repair your iPad, you’ll need to provide them with your iPad’s serial number. Here’s how to find your iPad’s serial number: From the iPad’s home screen, tap Settings. Tap General, and then tap About. Your iPad’s serial number is displayed at the top of the page, as shown above.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-remove-an-app-from-your-macs-dock/Wed, 07 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-remove-an-app-from-your-macs-dock/Your Mac’s Dock is an application launcher that lets you quickly open applications and see at a glance which applications are already open. Your Mac automatically displays the icons of open applications on the Dock, and it also displays the icons applications that were put there by you (or Apple). All of the application icons (except the Finder and the Trash) can be removed from the Dock. Here’s how to remove an app from your Mac’s Dock:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-block-text-messages-on-your-ipad/Tue, 06 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-block-text-messages-on-your-ipad/Getting unwanted text messages on your iPad? You can use a feature on your iPad to block the phone number from sending text messages to your iPad again. After you block the phone number, you won’t get any more text messages from that phone number again. Here’s how to block text messages on your iPad: From the iPad’s home screen, tap the Messages icon. Tap the message from the phone number you want to block.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-block-text-messages-on-your-iphone/Mon, 05 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-block-text-messages-on-your-iphone/Getting unwanted text messages on your iPhone? You can use a feature on your iPhone to block the phone number from sending text messages to your iPhone again. After you block the phone number, you won’t get any more text messages from that phone number again. Here’s how to block text messages on your iPhone: From the iPhone’s home screen, tap the Messages icon. Tap the message from the phone number you want to block.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-automatic-updates-on-your-ipad/Thu, 01 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-automatic-updates-on-your-ipad/Your iPad is designed to keep itself up-to-date. It automatically checks Apple’s servers for new software updates, and it tries to automatically install new updates when they become available. But sometimes you don’t want your iPad to automatically install new software. If that’s the case, you should disable automatic updates on your iPad. Here’s how to disable automatic updates on your iPad: From the iPad’s home screen, tap Settings. Tap General.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-automatic-updates-on-your-iphone/Wed, 31 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-automatic-updates-on-your-iphone/Your iPhone is designed to keep itself up-to-date. It automatically checks Apple’s servers for new software updates, and it tries to automatically install new updates when they become available. But sometimes you don’t want your iPhone to automatically install new software. If that’s the case, you should disable automatic updates on your iPhone. Here’s how to disable automatic updates on your iPhone: From the iPhone’s home screen, tap Settings. Tap General.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-automatic-updates-on-your-mac/Mon, 29 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-automatic-updates-on-your-mac/Your Mac is designed to keep itself up-to-date. It automatically checks Apple’s servers for new software updates, and it tries to automatically install new updates when they become available. But sometimes you don’t want your Mac to automatically install new software. If that’s the case, you should disable automatic updates on your Mac. Here’s how to disable automatic updates on your Mac: From the Apple menu, select System Preferences. Click Software Update.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-reduce-mac-menu-bar-transparency/Fri, 26 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-reduce-mac-menu-bar-transparency/By default, your Mac’s menu bar is transparent, which means the menu bar background color automatically changes depending on whatever application you’re using. You can disable this transparency feature to keep the background color of your menu bar consistent no matter what application you’re using. Here’s how to reduce your Mac’s menu bar transparency: From the Apple menu, select System Preferences. Click Accessability. From the sidebar, select Display. Select the Reduce Transparency checkbox.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-name-of-your-ipad/Thu, 25 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-name-of-your-ipad/Your iPad has a name that is visible to other devices on the network it’s connected to. This hostname can be important when trying to share files or otherwise communicate with another device. You can change the name of your iPad to give it a personal, memorable name that is easy to remember and recognize. Here’s how to change the name of your iPad: From your iPad’s home screen, tap Settings.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-name-of-your-iphone/Wed, 24 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-name-of-your-iphone/Your iPhone has a name that is visible to other devices on the network it’s connected to. This hostname can be important when trying to share files or otherwise communicate with another device. You can change the name of your iPhone to give it a personal, memorable name that is easy to remember and recognize. Here’s how to change the name of your iPhone: From your iPhone’s home screen, tap Settings.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-name-of-your-mac/Tue, 23 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-name-of-your-mac/Your Mac has a name that is visible to other devices on the network it’s connected to. This hostname can be important when trying to share files or otherwise communicate with another device. You can change the name of your Mac to give it a personal, memorable name that is easy to remember and recognize. Here’s how to change the name of your Mac: From the Apple menu, select System Preferences.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/set-scroll-bars-to-always-display-on-your-mac/Mon, 22 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/set-scroll-bars-to-always-display-on-your-mac/Operating systems like macOS and Windows are constantly being updated with new features, but for the longest time, you could always count on seeing scroll bars in windows, no matter what operating system you used. But then multi-touch gestures hit the scene and the scroll bars were gone. Poof! Just like that. Actually, that’s not entirely true. By default, the scroll bars in macOS are designed to be displayed automatically when input from a mouse or trackpad is detected.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-add-emoji-keyboard-iphone-ipad/Sat, 20 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-add-emoji-keyboard-iphone-ipad/Emoji is one of the great joys of modern life. 😂 Free and fun, expressive and easy-to-use, emoji can quickly convey emotions when sending text messages and other electronic communications. But to use it effectively on your iPhone and iPad, you’ll need to enable the emoji keyboard. Enabling this feature places the emoji button on your keyboard so you can easily access and insert emoji into your text. Here’s how to add the emoji keyboard on your iPhone and iPad:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-emoji-on-your-ipad/Fri, 19 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-emoji-on-your-ipad/Emoji is everywhere, in everything. 😎 Your iPad has built-in features you can use to add emoji in email, webpages, documents, and more. We’ll show you how to use emoji on your iPad to quickly and easily insert emoji in any text. 🚀 Here’s how to use emoji on your iPad: In an application, click where you want to insert the emoji. Tap the Emoji button on the keyboard.  Tip: Don’t see the Emoji button on your keyboard?https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-copy-and-paste-on-ipad/Wed, 17 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-copy-and-paste-on-ipad/For new iPad users, learning how to copy and paste text on a iPad is one of the first orders of business. It’s easy to copy and paste on a iPad once you know how to do it. This tutorial will show you how to do it! Here’s how to copy and paste text on your iPad: Open the application you want to copy text from. Tap and hold your finger on the text you want to copy.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-copy-and-paste-on-iphone/Tue, 16 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-copy-and-paste-on-iphone/For new iPhone users, learning how to copy and paste text on a iPhone is one of the first orders of business. It’s easy to copy and paste on a iPhone once you know how to do it. This tutorial will show you how to do it! Here’s how to copy and paste text on your iPhone: Open the application you want to copy text from. Tap and hold your finger on the text you want to copy.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-emoji-on-your-iphone/Mon, 15 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-emoji-on-your-iphone/Emoji is everywhere, in everything. 😎 Your iPhone has built-in features you can use to add emoji in email, webpages, documents, and more. We’ll show you how to use emoji on your iPhone to quickly and easily insert emoji in any text. 🚀 Here’s how to use emoji on your iPhone: In an application, click where you want to insert the emoji. Tap the Emoji button on the keyboard.  Tip: Don’t see the Emoji button on your keyboard?https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-emoji-on-your-mac/Sat, 13 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-emoji-on-your-mac/Emoji is everywhere, in everything. 😎 Your Mac has built-in features you can use to add emoji in email, webpages, documents, and more. We’ll show you how to use emoji on your Mac to quickly and easily insert emoji in any text. 🚀 Here’s how to use emoji on your Mac: In an application, click where you want to insert the emoji. From the Edit menu, select Emoji & Symbols.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-your-ipads-wallpaper/Fri, 12 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-your-ipads-wallpaper/Changing your iPad’s wallpaper is one of the best and easiest ways to customize it. You can use photos, images you find on the internet, or the free wallpaper images that Apple provides. The best part is that you can use different images for the home screen and the lock screen. We’ll show you how to do it! Here’s how to change your iPad’s wallpaper: From the iPhone’s home screen, tap Settings.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-your-iphones-wallpaper/Thu, 11 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-your-iphones-wallpaper/Changing your iPhone’s wallpaper is one of the best and easiest ways to customize it. You can use photos, images you find on the internet, or the free wallpaper images that Apple provides. The best part is that you can use different images for the home screen and the lock screen. We’ll show you how to do it! Finding Images to Use as Wallpaper Before you do anything else, you should find the images that you want to use as wallpaper.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-your-macs-mac-address/Wed, 10 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-your-macs-mac-address/Each of your Mac’s network interfaces — such as the ethernet and Wi-Fi cards — have a permanent, unique serial number called a media access control (MAC) address. Some universities and employers may request your Mac’s MAC addresses to monitor or limit your access to certain networks. MAC addresses can also be used for less nefarious purposes. For example, if your computer is stolen on a university’s campus, the IT department may be able to use its MAC address to trigger an alert when the criminal connects your computer to a university network.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-font-size-on-your-ipad/Tue, 09 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-font-size-on-your-ipad/Your iPad has a setting that allows you to change the font size on your iPad. Boosting the font size can make text on your iPad easier to read. This is a great option for anyone who wears glasses or generally has a hard time reading text on the iPad. The font size setting doesn’t apply to all applications, but all Apple applications (like Mail, etc.) are supported. Here’s how to change the font size on your iPad:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-font-size-on-your-iphone/Mon, 08 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-font-size-on-your-iphone/Your iPhone has a setting that allows you to change the font size on your iPhone. Boosting the font size can make text on your iPhone easier to read. This is a great option for anyone who wears glasses or generally has a hard time reading text on the iPhone. The font size setting doesn’t apply to all applications, but all Apple applications (like Mail, etc.) are supported. Here’s how to change the font size on your iPhone:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-dark-mode-on-your-mac/Sun, 07 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-dark-mode-on-your-mac/Your Mac provides a dark mode feature that turns the background of most applications black to make viewing your Mac’s applications at night easier. You can enable dark mode manually or set it to turn on automatically at night. Dark mode isn’t to everyone’s tastes — for example, not everyone likes reading white text on black backgrounds — but generally speaking, this is a feature that most people seem appreciate using a night.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-dark-mode-on-your-ipad/Sat, 06 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-dark-mode-on-your-ipad/Apple’s iPad provides a dark mode feature that turns the background of most applications black to make viewing your iPad at night easier. You can enable dark mode manually or set it to turn on automatically at night. Dark mode isn’t to everyone’s tastes — for example, not everyone likes reading white text on black backgrounds — but generally speaking, this is a feature that most people seem appreciate using a night.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-dark-mode-on-your-iphone/Fri, 05 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-dark-mode-on-your-iphone/Apple’s iPhone provides a dark mode feature that turns the background of most applications black to make viewing your iPhone at night easier. You can enable dark mode manually or set it to turn on automatically at night. Dark mode isn’t to everyone’s tastes — for example, not everyone likes reading white text on black backgrounds — but generally speaking, this is a feature that most people seem appreciate using a night.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-output-stereo-audio-in-mono-on-your-ipad/Thu, 04 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-output-stereo-audio-in-mono-on-your-ipad/Recently I replaced my aging Bose QC25 headphones with a pair of AirPods Pro headphones. Both products are a major upgrade from the stock earbuds that ship with iPhones, but the high-quality audio output also means that you can hear every imperfection in the music. For example, older tracks that were recorded in mono sometimes have output that is only audible in one channel, which means that you can only hear the music in one ear.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-output-stereo-audio-in-mono-on-your-iphone/Wed, 03 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-output-stereo-audio-in-mono-on-your-iphone/Recently I replaced my aging Bose QC25 headphones with a pair of AirPods Pro headphones. Both products are a major upgrade from the stock earbuds that ship with iPhones, but the high-quality audio output also means that you can hear every imperfection in the music. For example, older tracks that were recorded in mono sometimes have output that is only audible in one channel, which means that you can only hear the music in one ear.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/starting-applications-automatically-at-login/Tue, 02 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/starting-applications-automatically-at-login/Do you use the same applications, documents, AppleScripts, and Automator actions every day? Consider adding them as login items to start them automatically when you log in or turn on your Mac. It’s a great timesaver. Follow these instructions and kiss manually opening applications goodbye! Common examples of login items include utilities such as Alfred, LaunchBar, and Dropbox. Other popular login items include applications that need to be made available as soon as possible, such as email clients, web browsers, RSS readers, and even Twitter.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-passcode-on-your-ipad/Mon, 01 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-passcode-on-your-ipad/When you bought your iPad, you were prompted to enter a passcode to secure it. The passcode is typically a number that’s four digits or longer, although it can also be alphanumeric. With newer iPads, passcodes can be used as a secondary authentication method when the credential for Face ID or Touch ID can’t be verified. You can change the passcode on your iPad in the system settings. Here’s how to change the passcode on your iPad:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-passcode-on-your-iphone/Sun, 28 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-passcode-on-your-iphone/When you bought your iPhone, you were prompted to enter a passcode to secure it. The passcode is typically a number that’s four digits or longer, although it can also be alphanumeric. With newer iPhones, passcodes can be used as a secondary authentication method when the credential for Face ID or Touch ID can’t be verified. You can change the passcode on your iPhone in the system settings. Here’s how to change the passcode on your iPhone:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-set-an-alarm-on-your-ipad/Sat, 27 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-set-an-alarm-on-your-ipad/Your iPad is many things, but one thing it can also do is act as an alarm clock. When you set an alarm on your iPad, you configure it to play a sound at a certain time. The alarm will continue to go off until you interact with your iPad. Setting an alarm is a great way to wake yourself up at a certain time or remind yourself of important events.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-rebuild-spotlights-index/Fri, 26 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-rebuild-spotlights-index/Spotlight is the revolutionary search technology built into macOS that creates an index of practically everything on your hard drive — including email messages, contacts, and even calendar events — and then uses this index to search your hard drive. Your Mac is supposed to update this index in real time when you create or modify files or folders, but problems occasionally crop up. Spotlight won’t work correctly if this index is incomplete or corrupted.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-set-an-alarm-on-your-iphone/Thu, 25 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-set-an-alarm-on-your-iphone/Your iPhone is many things, but one thing it can also do is act as an alarm clock. When you set an alarm on your iPhone, you configure it to play a sound at a certain time. The alarm will continue to go off until you interact with your iPhone. Setting an alarm is a great way to wake yourself up at a certain time or remind yourself of important events.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-double-space-microsoft-word-for-mac-documents/Wed, 24 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-double-space-microsoft-word-for-mac-documents/Creating a document in Microsoft Word for Mac? Depending on who you’re creating the document for, you may have to double space your document. Many organizations such as schools and legal entities have very strict guidelines regarding the line spacing of Microsoft Word documents. Here’s how to change the line spacing of a Microsoft Word document to add double spacing: Open Microsoft Word on your Mac, and then create a new document.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-your-macs-login-password/Tue, 23 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-your-macs-login-password/By default, your Mac is password protected at login, so you’ll need to enter a password to start using your Mac. If you ever want to change your Mac’s login password to something different, you can do so using System Preferences. It’s a quick and easy way to update the login credentials for your Mac. Here’s how to change your Mac’s login password: From the Apple menu, select System Preferences.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-delete-books-and-pdf-files-on-your-iphone-or-ipad/Mon, 22 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-delete-books-and-pdf-files-on-your-iphone-or-ipad/So you’ve read a book or PDF file on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch. Now how do you get rid of it? This tutorial shows you how to quickly and easily delete any book or PDF file from the Books app. It’s a great way to free up space, because these files can take up precious space on your device, especially if they contain a lot of embedded pictures.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-update-apps-on-your-ipad/Sun, 21 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-update-apps-on-your-ipad/The various apps on your iPad are constantly being updated by the developers. Do you have the latest versions? You can make sure you have the latest updates by manually checking and updating the apps on your iPad in the App Store. You can update all of the apps on your iPad, or you can pick and choose which apps you want to update. Here’s how to update apps on your iPad:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-manage-apple-app-subscriptions/Sat, 20 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-manage-apple-app-subscriptions/Some applications (like Microsoft Word) available in the Mac and iOS App Stores require monthly or yearly subscriptions. Many of us also subscribe to Apple’s Music and TV services. These subscription fees are billed by Apple and paid to the application developers. You can manage and cancel these subscriptions using one of your Apple devices. How to Manage Apple App Subscriptions on a Mac Here’s how to manage Apple app subscriptions on your Mac:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-set-a-static-ip-address-on-a-mac/Fri, 19 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-set-a-static-ip-address-on-a-mac/When your Mac is connected to a private network in a home or office, it’s probably assigned what’s known as a dynamic IP address. (To check, see How to Find Your Mac’s IP Address.) That’s not a problem for the majority of users - most people don’t care whether their IP addresses changes or not. But dynamic IP addresses won’t work for certain tasks like port forwarding, dynamic DNS, or client-to-client file sharing on the local network.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-update-apps-on-your-iphone/Thu, 18 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-update-apps-on-your-iphone/The various apps on your iPhone are constantly being updated by the developers. Do you have the latest versions? You can make sure you have the latest updates by manually checking and updating the apps on your iPhone in the App Store. You can update all of the apps on your iPhone, or you can pick and choose which apps you want to update. Here’s how to update apps on your iPhone:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-off-iphone-notifications-while-driving/Wed, 17 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-off-iphone-notifications-while-driving/Your iPhone notifies you about all kinds of things — text messages, email, and more. But what’s a convenience in your home or work place can turn into a deadly distraction while you’re driving your vehicle. If you lack the self-discipline to ignore notifications while you’re driving, you can set your iPhone to automatically disable notifications while you’re driving. Here’s how to set your iPhone automatically disable notifications while you’re driving a vehicle:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-default-web-browser-on-ipad/Tue, 16 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-default-web-browser-on-ipad/All iPads are set to use the Safari web browser by default. If you’d prefer to use Chrome or Firefox as your default web browser, you can change the default web browser on your iPad in a few easy steps. Setting the default web browser tells your iPad which web browser to open when you click links in other applications, like the Mail or Calendar application. Here’s how to change the default web browser on your iPad:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-get-microsoft-word-for-mac/Mon, 15 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-get-microsoft-word-for-mac/Microsoft Word is one of the most popular word processing applications ever created, and Microsoft Word for Mac is a fully-featured version of the application for your Mac. Whether you’re a student who needs to type an essay or a lawyer who needs to write a legal brief, Microsoft Word is probably the application for you. You can get Microsoft Word for Mac by downloading it from the Mac App Store.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-show-the-word-count-in-microsoft-word-for-mac/Mon, 15 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-show-the-word-count-in-microsoft-word-for-mac/Creating a document in Microsoft Word for Mac? Depending on who you’re creating the document for, you may have to check the word count of the document to see how many words it contains. Many organizations such as schools and legal entities have very strict guidelines regarding the word count. Here’s how to show the word count in a Microsoft Word document on your Mac: Open Microsoft Word on your Mac, and then open a document.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-margins-in-a-microsoft-word-document/Sun, 14 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-margins-in-a-microsoft-word-document/Creating a document in Microsoft Word for Mac? Depending on who you’re creating the document for, you may have to change the document’s margins. Many organizations such as schools and legal entities have very strict guidelines regarding the margins. Here’s how to change the margins in a Microsoft Word document on your Mac: Open Microsoft Word on your Mac, and then create a new document. From the Format menu, select Document.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-add-page-numbers-to-a-microsoft-word-document/Sat, 13 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-add-page-numbers-to-a-microsoft-word-document/Creating a document in Microsoft Word for Mac? Depending on who you’re creating the document for, you may have to add page numbers. Many organizations such as schools and legal entities have very strict guidelines regarding the numbering of pages. Here’s how to add page numbers to a Microsoft Word document on your Mac: Open Microsoft Word on your Mac, and then create a new document. From the Insert menu, select Page Numbers.https://www.macinstruct.com/privacy/Sat, 13 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/privacy/Macinstruct (“us”, “we”, or “our”) operates the Macinstruct website (the “Service”). This page informs you of our policies regarding the collection, use and disclosure of Personal Information when you use our Service. We will not use or share your information with anyone except as described in this Privacy Policy. We use your Personal Information for providing and improving the Service. By using the Service, you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this policy.https://www.macinstruct.com/terms-and-conditions/Sat, 13 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/terms-and-conditions/By accessing this website, you are agreeing to be bound by these Terms and Conditions of Use, all applicable laws and regulations, and agree that you are responsible for compliance with any applicable local laws. If you do not agree with any of these terms, you are prohibited from using or accessing this site. The materials contained in this website are protected by applicable copyright and trademark law. License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-default-web-browser-on-iphone/Fri, 12 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-default-web-browser-on-iphone/All iPhones are set to use the Safari web browser by default. If you’d prefer to use Chrome or Firefox as your default web browser, you can change the default web browser on your iPhone in a few easy steps. Setting the default web browser tells your iPHone which web browser to open when you click links in other applications, like the Mail or Calendar application. Here’s how to change the default web browser on your iPhone:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-default-web-browser-on-mac/Fri, 12 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-default-web-browser-on-mac/All new Macs are set to use the Safari web browser by default. If you’d prefer to use Chrome or Firefox as your default web browser, you can change the default web browser on your Mac in a few easy steps. Setting the default web browser tells your Mac which web browser to open when you click links in other applications, like the Mail or Calendar application. Here’s how to change the default web browser on your Mac:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-make-and-receive-phone-calls-on-your-ipad/Thu, 11 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-make-and-receive-phone-calls-on-your-ipad/If you own an iPad and an iPhone, you can enable a feature that allows you to make and receive cellular phone calls from your iPad. This is handy if you primarily work on your iPad and prefer to take calls using whatever Bluetooth headset is connected to your iPad. This is a free feature that works even when you’re not next to your iPhone. Prerequisites To make and receive phone calls on your iPad, make sure you’ve done the following:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-make-and-receive-phone-calls-on-your-mac/Wed, 10 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-make-and-receive-phone-calls-on-your-mac/If you own a Mac and an iPhone, you can enable a feature that allows you to make and receive cellular phone calls from your Mac. This is handy if you primarily work on your Mac and prefer to take calls using whatever Bluetooth headset is connected to your Mac. This is a free feature that works even when you’re not next to your iPhone. Prerequisites To make and receive phone calls on your Mac, make sure you’ve done the following:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-connect-an-ipad-to-a-wi-fi-network/Tue, 09 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-connect-an-ipad-to-a-wi-fi-network/If you’re a new iPad owner, one of the first things you’ll need to learn how to do is connect your iPad to a wireless network. That’s because the iPad, being the small and portable device it is, just screams to be taken to the coffee shop. And the airport. And your friend’s house. All of which have wireless networks, or wi-fi networks as they’re referred to in iOS. Fortunately, it’s easy to connect an iPad to a wi-fi network.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-customize-your-macs-clock/Mon, 08 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-customize-your-macs-clock/Every Mac comes with a little digital clock built into your Mac’s menu bar. You probably already knew that. But what you might not know is that your menu bar clock can be customized to show or hide a variety of information. Or, if you’re so inclined, you can turn off the digital clock and switch to an analog version. Here’s how to do it: From the Apple menu, select System Preferences.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-read-kindle-books-on-an-ipad/Mon, 08 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-read-kindle-books-on-an-ipad/Amazon’s Kindle devices have become synonymous with ebooks. But did you know that there’s also a way to read Kindle books on an iPad? With the free Kindle application for iPad, you can read all of your Kindle books on your iPad — for free. Here’s how to read Kindle books on an iPad: Download and install the free Kindle app for iPad. It’s available from Apple’s App Store. Open the Kindle app on your iPad.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/tell-your-ipad-to-forget-a-wireless-network/Sun, 07 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/tell-your-ipad-to-forget-a-wireless-network/When you connect an iPad to a wi-fi network, the iPad remembers that network and will automatically attempt to connect to it in the future. This is a great feature for wi-fi networks you trust and use frequently. But mistakes happen. If you connect to the wrong network at a coffee shop, your iPad will automatically attempt to join that network every time you visit the coffee shop in the future.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-your-macs-audio-equalizer/Sat, 06 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-your-macs-audio-equalizer/Your Mac has an audio equalizer (EQ) that allows you to adjust the sound quality of music. The Mac’s equalizer isn’t as fancy as the physical ones that allow you to manually adjust the levels, but it does have a number of presets that will dramatically improve the sound quality of the music you play on your Mac. Unfortunately, the Mac’s equalizer only changes the audio from the Music app. Audio produced by other apps won’t be changed by the equalizer.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/enabling-the-ipads-audio-equalizer/Fri, 05 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/enabling-the-ipads-audio-equalizer/It seems ridiculous now, but in high school I purchased a Pioneer stereo system capable of pumping out over 1,000 watts of sound. The speakers and components were huge. It took three car trips just to get everything home from the store! The only thing I miss about that system is the equalizer on the amp, which allowed me to adjust the output of the sound levels. Believe it or not, your iPad has an audio equalizer too.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-your-iphones-eq-equalizer/Fri, 05 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-your-iphones-eq-equalizer/Your iPhone has an audio EQ (equalizer) that allows you to adjust the sound quality of music. The iPhone EQ isn’t as fancy as the physical ones that allow you to manually adjust the levels, but it does have a number of presets that will dramatically improve the sound quality of the music you play on your iPhone. Unfortunately, the iPhone’s EQ only changes the audio from the Music app. Audio produced by other apps, such as Videos or YouTube, won’t be changed by the EQ.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-night-shift-on-your-ipad/Thu, 04 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-night-shift-on-your-ipad/Apple says that your iPad’s display provides a “brilliant viewing experience,” which means it’s very bright. That’s great during the day, when you probably need the display to be as bright as possible, but what about at night? Recent research suggests that starting at screens after sunset can disrupt your sleep cycles. What is Night Shift, and what does it do on your iPad? The iPad’s Night Shift feature customizes your display’s lighting by changing the color of your screen, so you’re not as wired when you try to go to sleep.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-wifi-calling-on-your-iphone/Thu, 04 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-wifi-calling-on-your-iphone/If you live in an area with little to no cellular coverage, you might want to enable the WiFi Calling feature on your iPhone. This feature allows you to make and receive phone calls using your WiFi network instead of your service provider’s cellular network. The quality of your phone calls may improve after you enable the WiFi Calling feature.  Tip: The WiFi Calling feature isn’t available for all iPhone users. If your service provider doesn’t support this feature, you won’t be able to enable it.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-download-an-image-to-an-iphone/Wed, 03 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-download-an-image-to-an-iphone/Downloading an image from a website to your iPhone is an easy to way to save the pictures your friends post on Facebook or any other photo you discover on the internet. If you use iCloud to sync your photos, the saved images will instantly be available on all of your other Apple devices. The process is easy, and takes only a second. Here’s how to download images to your iPhone:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-make-a-folder-on-your-mac/Wed, 03 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-make-a-folder-on-your-mac/You can make folders on your Mac to store files and other folders. These are created in the Finder, and they’re a great way to organize everything on your Mac. But how do you make folders on your Mac? It turns out it’s really easy! Here’s how to make a folder on your Mac: Switch to the Finder by clicking the Finder icon on the dock. From the File menu, select New Folder.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-customize-your-macs-touch-bar/Tue, 02 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-customize-your-macs-touch-bar/Many MacBook Pros have a touch bar — an interactive screen above the keyboard that displays keys that change depending on the application you’re currently using. What many people don’t know is that your Mac’s touch bar can be customized. You can change the buttons that are displayed on the touch bar and rearrange them. Here’s how to customize your Mac’s touch bar: From the Apple menu, select System Preferences.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-set-your-macs-time-zone/Tue, 02 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-set-your-macs-time-zone/Your Mac automatically tries to set your time zone based on your location, but there are times when you may want to manually specify the time zone. By specifying a time zone in system settings, your Mac will automatically adjust the clock based on that location. And if you’re traveling, you can set your Mac’s time zone to use the current time zone, so the current time will always be displayed no matter where you are.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-block-caller-id-on-your-iphone/Mon, 01 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-block-caller-id-on-your-iphone/When you call other people with your iPhone, your phone number will appear on their screen by default. To hide your caller ID, you can change a setting to block caller ID on your iPhone. Once the setting is changed, your calls will appear as “Private” or “Unknown” on the recipient’s phone.  Tip: The block caller ID feature isn’t available for all iPhone users. If your service provider doesn’t support this feature, you won’t be able to enable it.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/tell-your-iphone-to-forget-a-wireless-network/Mon, 01 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/tell-your-iphone-to-forget-a-wireless-network/When you connect an iPhone to a wi-fi network, the iPhone remembers that network and will automatically attempt to connect to it in the future. This is a great feature for wi-fi networks you trust and use frequently. But mistakes happen. If you connect to the wrong network at a coffee shop, your iPhone will automatically attempt to join that network every time you visit the coffee shop in the future.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-monitor-your-macs-firewall-logs/Sun, 31 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-monitor-your-macs-firewall-logs/If you’re reading this article, you probably know that your Mac has a built-in firewall that should be turned on at all times. But how do you know that the firewall working, and how do you find out what’s happening behind the scenes? To check, you need to access your Mac’s firewall log - a file that contains a record of every event the firewall has processed. Here’s how to monitor your Mac’s firewall logs:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/set-your-macs-clock-to-24-hour-time/Sun, 31 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/set-your-macs-clock-to-24-hour-time/Many people use a 24-hour clock, also known as “military time,” to keep track of time. This is the most commonly used time notation in the world today, and it’s the international standard notation for time of day. The 24-hour clock is especially popular in military and health care environments. Here’s how to set your Mac’s clock to 24-hour time (military time): From the Apple menu, select System Preferences. Click Dock & Menu Bar.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-night-shift-on-your-iphone/Sat, 30 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-night-shift-on-your-iphone/Apple says that your iPhone’s display provides a “brilliant viewing experience,” which means it’s very bright. That’s great during the day, when you probably need the display to be as bright as possible, but what about at night? Recent research suggests that starting at screens after sunset can disrupt your sleep cycles. What is Night Shift, and what does it do on your iPhone? The iPhone’s Night Shift feature customizes your display’s lighting by changing the color of your screen, so you’re not as wired when you try to go to sleep.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-configure-your-macs-firewall/Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-configure-your-macs-firewall/Every Mac ships with a built-in firewall — a service that can be configured to disallow information from entering your Mac. But what is a firewall, and why do you need to use it on your Mac? Firewall Crash Course Every time you request information from the Internet, such as a web page or email message, your Mac sends data packets to request the information. Servers receive the packets, and then send other packets back to your Mac.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/set-your-ipads-clock-to-24-hour-time/Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/set-your-ipads-clock-to-24-hour-time/Many people use a 24-hour clock, also known as “military time,” to keep track of time. This is the most commonly used time notation in the world today, and it’s the international standard notation for time of day. The 24-hour clock is especially popular in military and health care environments. Here’s how to set your iPad’s clock to 24-hour time (military time): From the iPad’s home screen, tap Settings. Tap General.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-night-shift-on-your-mac/Thu, 28 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-night-shift-on-your-mac/Apple says that your Mac’s display provides a “brilliant viewing experience,” which means it’s very bright. That’s great during the day, when you probably need the display to be as bright as possible, but what about at night? Recent research suggests that starting at screens after sunset can disrupt your sleep cycles. Your Mac’s Night Shift feature customizes your display’s lighting by changing the color of your screen, so you’re not as wired when you try to go to sleep.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-your-macs-ip-address/Thu, 28 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-your-macs-ip-address/Your Mac is assigned something called an IP address when it connects to a network. Other devices that are connected to the same network can use this unique identifier to transfer information to and from your Mac. If this sounds confusing, it might help to think of an IP address as your Mac’s home address. Just like physical mail, which is routed to your home via a unique address, digital information is routed to your Mac using an IP address.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-do-not-disturb-on-your-iphone/Wed, 27 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-do-not-disturb-on-your-iphone/Sometimes you just need to temporarily disable all of the notifications on your iPhone. No phone calls, no notifications, nothing. The Do Not Disturb feature on your iPhone has been specifically designed for this purpose. After you enable this feature, virtually all calls and notifications will be silenced while your iPhone is locked. The default Do Not Disturb settings can be changed to silence even more calls and notifications. Here’s how to turn on the Do Not Disturb feature on your iPhone:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-block-spam-likely-calls-on-your-iphone/Tue, 26 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-block-spam-likely-calls-on-your-iphone/You can manually block phone numbers on your iPhone, but if you find yourself getting a lot of “Scam Likely” calls on your iPhone, you can also enable a feature on your iPhone to automatically hide calls from unknown callers. After you enable the Silence Unknown Callers feature, phone calls from numbers that aren’t in your contacts will be silenced and sent to your voice mail. This is a great way to cut down on marketing and scam calls.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-your-ipads-storage/Mon, 25 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-your-ipads-storage/Your iPad has a finite amount of storage space and when it’s gone, it’s gone. Fortunately, there’s a quick and easy way to check your iPad’s total and available storage space. You can also use a feature built into your iPad to see which apps are taking up the most space. The feature allows you to “offload” apps and delete them if necessary. Here’s how to check your iPad’s storage space:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/set-your-mac-to-automatically-empty-trash/Mon, 25 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/set-your-mac-to-automatically-empty-trash/When you’re done with files and folders on your Mac, you drag them to the trash. You can manually empty your Mac’s trash to permanently remove unwanted files or folders. But there’s an easy way to automate the process. By enabling a setting on your Mac, the trash will automatically delete files and folders that are over 30 days old. Here’s how to set your Mac to automatically empty the trash:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-your-iphones-battery-health/Sun, 24 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-your-iphones-battery-health/If your iPhone’s battery life seems to be getting shorter and shorter, it might be time to check your iPhone’s battery health. All iPhones ship with batteries that are designed to last for years, but depending on how you typically recharge your iPhone’s battery, the battery’s capacity can be reduced early leading to shorter battery life. Checking your iPhone’s battery health can help you keep an eye on things and make sure your iPhone’s battery isn’t defective.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-empty-your-macs-trash/Sun, 24 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-empty-your-macs-trash/When you’re ready to delete files on your Mac, you drag and drop them on your Mac’s trash can. It’s the equivalent of the Recycling Bin on Windows operating systems. But what happens after you move files to the trash? The trash is essentially a folder on your Mac — a holding spot for files you want to delete eventually, but not quite yet. If you change your mind, you can just drag a file out of the trash and into another folder.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-unblock-phone-numbers-on-your-iphone/Sat, 23 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-unblock-phone-numbers-on-your-iphone/If you previously decided to block a phone number on your iPhone and you’ve changed your mind, you can unblock the phone number so you can receive calls from the phone number again on your iPhone. After you unblock the phone number, you’ll be notified of calls and voice messages from the caller. Here’s how to unblock a phone number on your iPhone: From the iPhone’s home screen, tap the Settings icon.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-block-phone-numbers-on-your-iphone/Fri, 22 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-block-phone-numbers-on-your-iphone/Getting unwanted calls on your iPhone? You can use a feature on your iPhone to block the phone number from calling your iPhone again. After you block the phone number, the caller will still be able to leave you a voice message, but it won’t appear in a notification on your iPhone.  Tip: If you’re receiving a lot of “Scam Likely” calls on your iPhone, you may want to block all of the Scam Likely calls on your iPhone.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-tell-what-shell-your-mac-is-using/Fri, 22 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-tell-what-shell-your-mac-is-using/Every Mac comes with a Unix shell that provides a command line interface. Macs running macOS 10.15 and later use Zsh by default. Before that, Macs used the Bash shell by default. Of course, no matter what version of macOS you’re using, you can change the shell your Mac is using. What shell is your Mac using? There’s an easy way to tell — here’s how. Open the Terminal application on your Mac.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-siri-on-your-ipad/Thu, 21 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-siri-on-your-ipad/Siri is Apple’s virtual voice assistant. Freely available on all of Apple’s devices, including iPads, Siri can help you find information, add calendar events, and send email. While many people find Siri helpful, some people find it distracting. Others worry about the privacy implications of their voice commands being sent to Apple. In any event, there’s a quick and easy way to turn off Siri on your iPad. Here’s how to disable Siri on your iPad:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-git-tab-autocomplete-on-your-mac/Thu, 21 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-git-tab-autocomplete-on-your-mac/The git version control system is a popular choice among developers when working with source code. Git is automatically installed on every Mac by default, but you might want to enable the git tab autocomplete feature to help you automatically complete commands and branch names. This feature is a must-have if you work with long branch names. For example, if you typed git checkout ma and then pressed the Tab key, git tab autocomplete would automatically fill in the rest of the branch name, like this: git checkout main.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/connect-your-macbook-to-the-internet-using-an-ethernet-adapter/Wed, 20 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/connect-your-macbook-to-the-internet-using-an-ethernet-adapter/Using an ethernet cable has always been a popular way to connect to the internet, but newer MacBooks don’t have ethernet ports. Fortunately, with the help of a low-cost ethernet adapter, you can connect an ethernet cable to your MacBook. The ethernet adapter is a dongle that plugs into your MacBook’s USB-C port. We recommend the Belkin USB-C ethernet adapter. This adapter works natively with your MacBook and macOS, and it supports gigabit internet speeds.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-default-search-engine-on-ipad/Tue, 19 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-default-search-engine-on-ipad/By default, your iPad’s search engine is set to Google when using the Safari web browser. Fortunately, there’s a quick way to change your iPad’s default search engine from Google to another search engine like DuckDuckGo or Ecosia. Here’s how to change the default search engine on your iPad: From the iPad’s home screen, tap Settings. Tap Safari. Tap Search Engine. Tap the name of the search engine you want to use on your iPad.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-your-ipads-dns-servers/Tue, 19 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-your-ipads-dns-servers/Just like in macOS, you can change the DNS servers on your iPad. This can significantly speed up Safari and other iPad apps that use the internet. For a general introduction to DNS, and to learn why you would want to change the DNS servers on your iPad, see How to Change Your Mac’s DNS Servers. Before we start, you should know a couple things about how your iPad handles DNS.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-default-search-engine-on-iphone/Mon, 18 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-the-default-search-engine-on-iphone/By default, your iPhone’s search engine is set to Google when using the Safari web browser. Fortunately, there’s a quick way to change your iPhone’s default search engine from Google to another search engine like DuckDuckGo or Ecosia. Here’s how to change the default search engine on your iPhone: From the iPhone’s home screen, tap Settings. Tap Safari. Tap Search Engine. Tap the name of the search engine you want to use on your iPhone.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-repeat-one-song-in-the-macs-music-application/Mon, 18 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-repeat-one-song-in-the-macs-music-application/Sometimes you just want to play one song over and over again on repeat. It’s easy to do this in the Music application on your Mac. Once this feature is enabled, the song you start playing will play over and over again until you pause the music. Here’s how to repeat one song in your Mac’s Music application: In your Mac’s Music application, click the repeat icon repeatedly until a “1” appears on the icon, as shown below.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-your-ipads-ip-address/Sun, 17 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-your-ipads-ip-address/Your iPad is assigned something called an IP address when it connects to a Wi-Fi network. Other devices that are connected to the same Wi-Fi network can use this unique identifier to transfer information to and from your iPad. If this sounds confusing, it might help to think of an IP address as your iPad’s home address. Just like physical mail, which is routed to your home via a unique address, digital information is routed to your iPad using an IP address.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-forward-text-messages-to-your-ipad/Sun, 17 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-forward-text-messages-to-your-ipad/Many text messages are still sent as SMS/MMS text messages, and you can forward these text messages from your iPhone to your iPad so they appear in the Messages application on your iPad (you can also respond to the text messages from your iPad). This is a great feature for people who want to do all of their texting from their iPad. Here’s how to forward text messages to from your iPhone to your iPad:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-forward-text-messages-to-your-mac/Sun, 17 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-forward-text-messages-to-your-mac/Not everyone owns an iPhone, and that means that many text messages are still sent as SMS/MMS text messages. You can forward these text messages from your iPhone to your Mac so they appear in the Messages application on your Mac (you can also respond to the text messages from your Mac). This is a great feature for people who want to do all of their texting from their Mac.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-siri-on-your-iphone/Sat, 16 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-siri-on-your-iphone/Siri is Apple’s virtual voice assistant. Freely available on all of Apple’s devices, including iPhones, Siri can help you find information, add calendar events, and send email. While many people find Siri helpful, some people find it distracting. Others worry about the privacy implications of their voice commands being sent to Apple. In any event, there’s a quick and easy way to turn off Siri on your iPhone. Here’s how to disable Siri on your iPhone:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-mute-the-sound-on-an-ipad/Sat, 16 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-mute-the-sound-on-an-ipad/iPads play a variety of sounds by default. That can be nice when you’re using the iPad in the comfort of your home, but potentially awkward when you’re sitting in the office or airport. Many of the newer iPads don’t have physical switches to mute sound, so you have to use software to mute the sound. Here’s how to mute the sound on an iPad: Placing your finger on the top-right corner of the screen, pull down, as shown below.https://www.macinstruct.com/about/Fri, 15 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/about/Macinstruct is dedicated to teaching people about Macs and the applications that run on them. Our website provides easy-to-understand tips and tutorials to help people get the most out of their Apple hardware and software. The Original Mac Tutorial Website Macinstruct is an integral part of the Mac story. Since 1999, when Macinstruct was first developed on a Quadra 605 running Mac OS 7.5, we’ve been helping people learn how to use their Apple hardware and software products.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-big-mouse-pointer-on-mac/Fri, 15 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-big-mouse-pointer-on-mac/By default, all Macs come with the Shake mouse pointer to locate feature enabled. This feature is designed to help you locate the mouse pointer on your screen quickly by making it big when you shake the mouse or move the pointer quickly with the trackpad. Some people find this feature distracting during presentations and day-to-day use. Fortunately, there’s a quick and easy way to disable the big mouse pointer on your Mac.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-lock-the-screen-rotation-an-ipad/Fri, 15 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-lock-the-screen-rotation-an-ipad/By default, your iPad will switch around the screen rotation to adjust to whatever orientation you’re holding the iPad. You can disable this feature to temporarily lock the screen rotation on your iPad. That way, the screen won’t rotate when you adjust the iPad. Here’s how to lock the screen rotation on an iPad: Adjust the iPad so the screen rotation is the way you want it. Placing your finger on the top-right corner of the screen, pull down, as shown below.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-set-bash-as-the-default-shell-on-mac/Fri, 15 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-set-bash-as-the-default-shell-on-mac/Every new Mac uses the Z shell (Zsh) by default, but you can quickly and easily switch the default shell back to Bash. There are several reasons you might want to do this. For example, you may need to be using the bash shell to execute bash scripts on a Mac.  Tip: Not sure what shell your Mac is using? You can check using the instructions in How to Tell What Shell Your Mac is Using.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-your-iphones-dns-servers/Thu, 14 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-your-iphones-dns-servers/Just like in macOS, you can change the DNS servers on your iPhone. This can significantly speed up Safari and other iPhone apps that use the Internet. For a general introduction to DNS, and to learn why you would want to change the DNS servers on your iPhone, see How to Change Your Mac’s DNS Servers. Before we start, you should know a couple things about how iOS handles DNS. First, these instructions only work for Wi-Fi connections - iOS does not allow you to change the DNS servers when connected to cellular networks.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-siri-on-your-mac/Thu, 14 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-siri-on-your-mac/Siri is Apple’s virtual voice assistant. Freely available on all of Apple’s devices, including Macs, Siri can help you find information, add calendar events, and send email. While many people find Siri helpful, some people find it distracting. Others worry about the privacy implications of their voice commands being sent to Apple. In any event, there’s a quick and easy way to turn off Siri on your Mac. Here’s how to disable Siri on your Mac:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/synchronize-your-macs-clock-with-a-time-server/Thu, 14 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/synchronize-your-macs-clock-with-a-time-server/By default, your Mac synchronizes its clock with a network time server to keep accurate time. Network time servers are the authoritative timekeepers of the internet, ensuring that everyone has the right time. Apple’s time server (time.apple.com) is the default time server for your Mac, but you can switch to another time server, such as one maintained by your employer or university. Here’s how to synchronize your Mac’s clock with a time server and optionally change the time server:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-backup-your-iphone-to-icloud/Wed, 13 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-backup-your-iphone-to-icloud/iCloud provides an easy way for you to back up your iPhone to iCloud. Enable this feature, and your iPhone will automatically create a copy of the information stored on your iPhone and upload it to Apple’s cloud servers. If you ever lose your iPhone or purchase a new iPhone, you can use the iCloud backup to restore the backup to the new iPhone.  Warning: If you enable this feature, Apple can decrypt your backup and provide the contents to law enforcement.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-your-magic-mouses-battery-life/Wed, 13 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-your-magic-mouses-battery-life/Apple’s Magic Mouse is probably the best wireless Bluetooth mouse available. But as with all wireless devices, the batteries will need to be recharged or replaced eventually. That’s why it’s a good idea to check your Magic Mouse’s battery life before you leave home or deliver a presentation. Fortunately, there’s a quick way to check your mouse’s remaining battery life. Here’s how to do it: From the Apple menu, select System Preferences.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-backspace-on-a-mac/Tue, 12 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-backspace-on-a-mac/Your Mac doesn’t have a dedicated backspace key, but it’s still possible to backspace on a Mac using a keyboard shortcut. Backspacing allows you to “forward delete” by deleting characters behind the cursor (instead of in front of it, as when you use the delete button). To backspace on a Mac, press the fn and Delete keys, as shown below. This keyboard shortcut for backspace works in every Mac application. You can use it to backspace in applications like Safari, Microsoft Word, Pages, and many more.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-off-notifications-on-a-mac/Mon, 11 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-off-notifications-on-a-mac/Your Mac displays a variety of notifications in the top-right corner of the screen to keep you updated on what’s happening, but sometimes you need to turn off notifications on your Mac temporarily or permanently. Disabling notifications can be useful when you need to focus on a particular task or when you don’t want to be distracted while on something like a video conference call. This tutorial will show you how to turn off notifications on your Mac.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-copy-and-paste-on-mac/Sun, 10 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-copy-and-paste-on-mac/For new Mac users, learning how to copy and paste text, images, and files on a Mac is one of the first orders of business. It’s easy to copy and paste on a Mac using keyboard shortcuts or menu items. This tutorial will show you how to do it! How to Copy and Paste on a Mac Using Keyboard Shortcuts You can copy and paste on a Mac using two keyboard shortcuts.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-hide-the-dock-on-your-mac/Sun, 10 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-hide-the-dock-on-your-mac/The Dock is the tray that holds the icons of your favorite apps and the apps that are open on your Mac. It’s a handy way to switch between applications, but it also takes up a lot of screen real estate, especially if you use a MacBook. Fortunately, there’s an easy way to hide the Dock on your Mac so that it only appears when you mouse over it. Here’s how to hide the Dock on your Mac.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-your-airpods-battery-life/Sat, 09 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-your-airpods-battery-life/Apple reports that the AirPods Pro headphones can provide 4.5 hours of playback on a single charge. By recharging the headphones with the charging case, you can eek out 24 hours of playback. But how do you check the battery life of the AirPods Pro headphones? There’s a light on the charging case, but it doesn’t provide any indication of how much time you can continue listening to the headphones. Fortunately, there’s a quick and easy way to check the AirPods battery life using an iPhone or a Mac.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-the-root-user-on-a-mac/Sat, 09 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-the-root-user-on-a-mac/The most advanced tasks demand the most powerful user account of them all: the root user. When you log in as root, you have read and write privileges to every file on your Mac. This awesome power lets you override any account or permission restriction, but be careful! You could really mess things up if you don’t know what you’re doing.  Warning: The root account is disabled by default. To prevent accidents, you should only enable and utilize the root account when you absolutely need it.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-make-a-bash-script-executable-on-a-mac/Sat, 09 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-make-a-bash-script-executable-on-a-mac/Bash scripts are files containing code that tell your computer to do something. They’re a staple of the Linux world, and there are thousands of them freely available on the internet. With a bit of tweaking, you can use these scripts on your Mac, too. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to make a bash script executable on a Mac. Here’s how to make a bash script executable on a Mac:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-compress-zip-files-and-folders-on-a-mac/Fri, 08 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-compress-zip-files-and-folders-on-a-mac/If you own a Mac, you’ll eventually need to transfer files and folders to others. To do that, you’re going to want to shrink - or compress - the files so they take up the least amount of space possible. That way, it will be easy to move your files via email, FTP, or even with an instant messaging application. In the past, Mac users had to rely on an expensive application called Stuffit to compress files and folders.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-connect-airpods-to-your-mac/Fri, 08 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-connect-airpods-to-your-mac/Apple’s AirPods headphones use Bluetooth technology to wirelessly connect to all Apple devices. You can connect AirPods to an iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, and yes, even a Mac. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to connect your AirPods to a Mac. Here’s how to connect AirPods to a Mac for the first time: From the Apple menu, select System Preferences. Click Bluetooth. The window shown below appears. Verify that Bluetooth is turned on.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-your-apple-bluetooth-keyboards-battery-life/Thu, 07 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-your-apple-bluetooth-keyboards-battery-life/The Apple Bluetooth keyboard is one of those rare, indispensable devices I couldn’t live without. It’s wireless, it’s portable, and I love typing on it. There’s only one problem: When the keyboard’s batteries run out of juice, it stops working. This can be an issue when I’m working away from home or trying to meet a tight deadline. Fortunately, there’s a quick way to check the keyboard’s remaining battery life. Here’s how to do it:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-your-iphones-imei-number/Thu, 07 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-your-iphones-imei-number/Your iPhone has a unique identifier known as an IMEI, or International Mobile Equipment Identity number. This isn’t information you’ll need under normal circumstances, but this number can be used to unlock your iPhone and activate it with a different mobile carrier. You’ll need the IMEI number to unlock the iPhone and switch carriers. Here’s how to find your iPhone’s IMEI number: From the iPhone’s home screen, tap Settings. Tap General, and then tap About.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-your-iphones-serial-number/Thu, 07 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-your-iphones-serial-number/Every iPhone is assigned a unique serial number. This isn’t something you’ll need to know under normal circumstances, but if you ever need to check your AppleCare status or have Apple repair your iPhone, you’ll need to provide them with your iPhone’s serial number. Here’s how to find your iPhone’s serial number: From the iPhone’s home screen, tap Settings. Tap General, and then tap About. Your iPhone’s serial number is displayed at the top of the page, as shown above.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-kill-a-process-on-your-mac/Thu, 07 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-kill-a-process-on-your-mac/In a previous tutorial, we discussed how to force quit Mac apps. That procedure works in most situations, but sometimes the hidden components of an application, referred to processes, can stop responding and slow your Mac down. Fortunately, you can use the Activity Monitor application that comes with every Mac to stop, or kill, processes on your Mac. Here’s how to kill a process on your Mac: Open the Activity Monitor application (it’s in Applications → Utilities).https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-make-an-alias-shortcut-on-a-mac/Thu, 07 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-make-an-alias-shortcut-on-a-mac/If you’ve ever wished you could have a single folder in two different places at once, you should consider creating an alias, which is known as a shortcut on Windows-based operating systems. An alias looks like a folder, but when you double click it, you open the actual folder it points to. It’s literally a shortcut to a different directory on your Mac. Many people create aliases for their most commonly used folders, such as Documents or Applications, and move those aliases to the Desktop.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-your-iphones-ip-address/Wed, 06 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-your-iphones-ip-address/Your iPhone is assigned something called an IP address when it connects to a Wi-Fi network. Other devices that are connected to the same Wi-Fi network can use this unique identifier to transfer information to and from your iPhone. If this sounds confusing, it might help to think of an IP address as your iPhone’s home address. Just like physical mail, which is routed to your home via a unique address, digital information is routed to your iPhone using an IP address.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/set-your-iphones-clock-to-24-hour-time/Wed, 06 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/set-your-iphones-clock-to-24-hour-time/Many people use a 24-hour clock, also known as “military time,” to keep track of time. This is the most commonly used time notation in the world today, and it’s the international standard notation for time of day. The 24-hour clock is especially popular in military and health care environments. Here’s how to set your iPhone’s clock to 24-hour time (military time): From the iPhone’s home screen, tap Settings. Tap General.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-output-stereo-audio-in-mono/Tue, 05 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-output-stereo-audio-in-mono/Recently I replaced my aging Bose QC25 headphones with a pair of AirPods Pro headphones. Both products are a major upgrade from the stock earbuds that ship with iPhones, but the high-quality audio output also means that you can hear every imperfection in the music. For example, older tracks that were recorded in mono sometimes have output that is only audible in one channel, which means that you can only hear the music in one ear.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-off-amber-alerts-on-your-iphone/Tue, 05 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-off-amber-alerts-on-your-iphone/By default, your iPhone will automatically notify you when local authorities issue an Amber alert or other public safety notification. These Amber alerts can be really annoying! They always seem to be sent at the most inconvenient times and the alert sound is absolutely horrendous. Fortunately, there’s an easy way to disable Amber alerts and public safety notifications. Here’s how to turn off Amber alerts on your iPhone: From the home screen, tap Settings.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-your-macs-dns-servers/Mon, 04 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-your-macs-dns-servers/Your Mac uses something called the Domain Name System (DNS) to access websites. It’s a system invisible to you, the user, and most people don’t even know it exists. But if the DNS servers you’re using are slow or unavailable, websites will load slowly or won’t load at all. That’s why it’s important to learn about DNS and consider changing your DNS servers. In this tutorial, we’ll show you everything you need to know about DNS to speed up surfing and ward off potential problems.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-force-quit-mac-apps/Mon, 04 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-force-quit-mac-apps/Under normal circumstances, you can quit applications on your Mac by pressing the Command and Q keys or selecting Quit from the application’s menu. But sometimes an application is frozen and just won’t quit. When that happens, you can force quit the application on your Mac to completely close it. Here’s how to force quit Mac apps: From the Apple menu, select Force Quit. The window shown below appears. Find the unresponsive application in the list and click it.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-your-macs-startup-disk/Sun, 03 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-your-macs-startup-disk/When your Mac turns on, it loads the operating system on the designated startup disk, a hard disk or partition containing the macOS operating system. Normally, the startup disk is set as the hard disk inside of your Mac, but you can use an external hard drive, USB thumb drive, or DVD as your startup disk. Changing Your Mac’s Startup Disk with System Preferences Here’s how to change your Mac’s startup disk:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-open-the-library-folder-on-your-mac/Sun, 03 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-open-the-library-folder-on-your-mac/Your Mac contains thousands of hidden files and folders that you’ll probably never need to access. We explained how to access all hidden files and folders in another tutorial, but there’s an easier way to access one of most important hidden folders on your Mac, called the Library folder. The user’s Library folder, which is different than the root Library folder at the top-level of the hard drive, contains hundreds files that store important preferences and settings for many of the applications on your Mac.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-switch-the-control-and-command-keys/Sun, 03 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-switch-the-control-and-command-keys/One of the most subtle differences between a Mac and a PC is also one of the biggest: the functionality of the control key on the keyboard. When you buy a Mac, you’ll need to start using the command key instead of the control key. For example, instead of pressing Control-S to save and Control-C to copy like you did in Windows, you’ll have to press Command-S and Command-C to do the same thing in macOS.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-connect-an-iphone-to-a-wi-fi-network/Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-connect-an-iphone-to-a-wi-fi-network/If you’re a new iPhone owner, one of the first things you’ll want to learn how to do is connect your iPhone to a wireless network. That’s because there are certain times when your cellular data connection just won’t cut it, even if you have an unlimited data plan. Using Facetime, downloading and streaming content from iTunes, and even surfing the web can be painfully slow without a wi-fi connection.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/make-your-iphone-ask-to-join-wi-fi-networks/Thu, 11 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/make-your-iphone-ask-to-join-wi-fi-networks/By default, your iPhone automatically connects to known wi-fi networks. (To stop an iPhone from automatically connecting, you can tell your iPhone to forget a wi-fi network.) But what happens if you take your iPhone to a new location? You’ll need to manually connect your iPhone to a wi-fi network. That’s a hassle. But if you have the foresight and inclination, you can save yourself time in the future by making your iPhone ask to join wi-fi networks when no known networks are available.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/controlling-airport-network-access-with-time-limits/Tue, 09 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/controlling-airport-network-access-with-time-limits/If you own an AirPort base station, you can use the Timed Access feature to control the days and times when users access the internet. This could come in handy in a variety of situations. For example, if you own a cafe and provide free wi-fi access, you can configure the AirPort to block all access to the internet when your business is closed. And if you have children, you can set time limits for specific devices in your home.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-your-ipads-mac-address/Thu, 28 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-your-ipads-mac-address/Your iPad’s Wi-Fi interface has a permanent, unique serial number called a media access control (MAC) address. Some universities and employers may request your iPad’s MAC address to monitor or limit your access to certain Wi-Fi networks. MAC addresses can also be used for less nefarious purposes. For example, if your iPad is stolen on a university’s campus, the IT department may be able to use its MAC address to trigger an alert when the criminal connects your iPad to a university network.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-your-iphones-mac-address/Mon, 25 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-your-iphones-mac-address/Your iPhone’s Wi-Fi interface has a permanent, unique serial number called a media access control (MAC) address. Some universities and employers may request your iPhone’s MAC address to monitor or limit your access to certain Wi-Fi networks. MAC addresses can also be used for less nefarious purposes. For example, if your iPhone is stolen on a university’s campus, the IT department may be able to use its MAC address to trigger an alert when the criminal connects your iPhone to a university network.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/setting-dhcp-reservations-on-your-airport/Fri, 22 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/setting-dhcp-reservations-on-your-airport/In a previous tutorial, you learned how to set a static IP address in Mac OS X to create a permanent, private IP address for your Mac that doesn’t change from one day to the next. But if you own an AirPort Extreme, AirPort Express, or Time Capsule base station, you can use something called DHCP reservations to do essentially the same thing. What’s the difference between a static IP address and a DHCP reservation?https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-configure-network-locations-in-os-x/Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-configure-network-locations-in-os-x/Your Mac allows you to save and quickly switch between multiple network configurations, which are referred to as network locations in OS X. This is a useful feature for users who need to set network-specific proxies, DNS servers, or static IP addresses. You can also use network locations to specify settings for specific network interfaces, such as an Ethernet card, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection, and even VPN. Once you’ve created and saved different network locations, you can switch between them by using the Apple menu or System Preferences.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/creating-a-dedicated-5ghz-airport-network/Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/creating-a-dedicated-5ghz-airport-network/AirPort base stations released after 2009 are capable of operating over both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands simultaneously. That means that when you connect a Mac, iPhone, or iPad to an AirPort’s wireless network, it will automatically select and use one of the bands for the best speed, consistency, and range. That should be fine under normal circumstances. The choice is made for you automatically, and you’ll probably never notice the difference.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-password-protect-an-airports-settings/Wed, 27 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-password-protect-an-airports-settings/Whether you operate a guest network on your AirPort or simply use it to provide wireless access to the people in your home or workplace, you should ensure that your AirPort base station’s settings are protected with a strong password. Doing so will prevent users connected to the AirPort network from modifying the base station’s settings with the AirPort Utility application. The base station’s password is usually specified when setting up the AirPort, but it can be changed at any time.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-take-a-screenshot-on-your-mac/Mon, 25 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-take-a-screenshot-on-your-mac/Need a way to capture your Mac’s entire screen or only a portion of it? Take a screenshot - a picture of your Mac’s screen that includes the windows and applications that are currently visible. You can take screenshots when creating documentation, explaining system settings to friends or family members, or just capturing something on your screen that you want to share with others. This tutorial shows you how. Capturing the Entire Screen Capturing everything on your Mac’s screen is the fastest and easiest way to take a screenshot.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-take-a-screenshot-of-your-ipad/Sat, 23 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-take-a-screenshot-of-your-ipad/Taking a screenshot of your iPad allows you to capture whatever is on your iPad’s screen. It’s a great way to share your high game scores, message conversations, or setting configurations. Screenshots are saved as photos on your iPad, and if you use Photo Stream, they’re automatically shared with all of your other Apple devices. An example screenshot is shown below. Here’s how to take a screenshot of your iPad:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-create-a-guest-network-with-an-airport/Wed, 20 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-create-a-guest-network-with-an-airport/Did you know that your AirPort base station is capable of creating two separate wi-fi networks? By enabling the guest network feature, you can create a second network specifically for guests or - since guest wi-fi networks can be open or protected with a password - authorized users. Creating a guest wi-fi network with your AirPort is easy and takes only a few minutes. This tutorial shows you how to do it.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/make-your-ipad-ask-to-join-wi-fi-networks/Tue, 19 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/make-your-ipad-ask-to-join-wi-fi-networks/By default, your iPad automatically connects to known wi-fi networks. (To stop an iPad from automatically connecting, you can tell your iPad to forget a wi-fi network.) But what happens if you take your iPad to a new location? You’ll need to manually connect your iPad to a wi-fi network. That’s a hassle. But if you have the foresight and inclination, you can save yourself time in the future by making your iPad ask to join wi-fi networks when no known networks are available.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/using-dropbox-for-version-control/Fri, 08 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/using-dropbox-for-version-control/Dropbox is a popular cloud storage service that magically moves files from one device to another, but it’s probably not the first name that comes to mind when you think of version control. However, as you’ll learn in this tutorial, Dropbox has several powerful features that allow you “undo” any changes you make to files saved in your Dropbox folder. This is an absolute necessity for those of us who use Dropbox to store critically important files that can be accidentally modified or deleted.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-create-an-itunes-playlist/Thu, 07 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-create-an-itunes-playlist/If you’re like me, you have thousands of songs in iTunes. It’s nice to have all of that music available at the click of a button, but different times and situations call for different types of music. For example, you might listen to Metallica and AC/DC during your lunch break and Bach and Brahms in the evening before going to sleep. That’s where playlists come in. Playlists are customized collections of songs that can be played on your computer, transferred to iOS devices, or burned to CD (see How to Burn a Music CD in iTunes).https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-wirelessly-sync-your-iphone/Wed, 06 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-wirelessly-sync-your-iphone/For years, the only way to sync the music, movies, photos, and other content on your Mac was to physically connect it to your iPhone with a USB cable. Of course, that’s still an option. But if you own an iPhone running iOS 5 or later and a Mac with iTunes 10.5 or later, there’s an even better way to sync content to your iPhone: wirelessly and automatically. This tutorial shows you how to cut the cord.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-your-magic-trackpads-battery-life/Sat, 19 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-check-your-magic-trackpads-battery-life/Apple’s Magic Trackpad is a great alternative to the classic mouse. But as with all wireless devices, the trackpad’s batteries will die eventually and you’ll need to replace them. That’s why it’s a good idea to check your Magic Trackpad’s battery life before you leave home or deliver a presentation. Fortunately, there’s a quick way to check your trackpad’s remaining battery life. Here’s how to do it: From the Apple menu, select System Preferences.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-make-an-os-x-recovery-usb-drive/Thu, 17 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-make-an-os-x-recovery-usb-drive/It’s a good idea to have a bootable emergency drive on hand, just in case disaster strikes your Mac. An emergency drive (also referred to as an OS X Recovery Disk) can help you repair the hard disk, reinstall the operating system, and restore from a Time Machine backup to get your computer back fast. With previous versions of OS X, you could have used the installation DVD to fix problems.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/enabling-firmware-password-protection-on-your-mac/Wed, 16 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/enabling-firmware-password-protection-on-your-mac/Firmware password protection can help safeguard your Mac and the data stored on it. With this feature enabled, users are prevented from booting from another startup disk or entering single-user mode — a command-line interface that can be accessed at startup. Firmware password protection is especially effective in enterprise or educational environments where administrators can secure the physical hardware but cannot be present to prevent tampering by employees or students. For example, unauthorized users can’t start the computer from a USB emergency drive when firmware password protection is enabled.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-password-protect-your-airports-wireless-network/Mon, 14 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-password-protect-your-airports-wireless-network/If you own an AirPort Extreme, AirPort Express, or Time Capsule, you should consider protecting your wireless network with a password to prevent other individuals from accessing it. Enabling password protection is easy and can provide peace of mind. You probably don’t want others stealing your bandwidth or, in a worst-case scenario, using your network to do something illegal. Here’s how to password protect your AirPort’s wireless network: Open the AirPort Utility application.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-inline-attachments-in-mail-app/Wed, 09 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-inline-attachments-in-mail-app/By default, the Mail application on your Mac displays image attachments inline with the text in the email message. This can be convenient when sending or receiving the occasional message with images that need explanations, as shown below. However, people who frequently send or receive email messages with lots of images may prefer to disable inline image attachments and instead have the images represented by icons only. Unfortunately, the Mail application does not provide a method of disabling inline image attachments in the preferences, so you’ll have to use the Terminal application to change this setting.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-your-iphones-phone-number/Mon, 07 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-your-iphones-phone-number/When you activate a new iPhone, your carrier provides you with documentation that contains the iPhone’s phone number. But if you haven’t yet committed the phone number to memory, or if you live in the United States and use a different phone number with Google Voice, you may need a quick way to find your iPhone’s number. Fortunately, there is a quick and easy way to do it as long as your iPhone is already activated with a standard SIM card.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-share-an-iphone-contact-with-a-friend/Fri, 04 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-share-an-iphone-contact-with-a-friend/The iOS Contacts application makes it easy to store contact information for friends and family members on your iPhone. But did you know that by tapping a button on your iPhone, you can share a contact’s information with a friend? This is a great way to share the phone numbers and email addresses of extended family members, friends of friends, and even contractors. Here’s how to share an iPhone contact with a friend:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/schedule-your-mac-to-automatically-sleep/Thu, 03 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/schedule-your-mac-to-automatically-sleep/If you’re one of those people who forgets to turn off your Mac at night, you might be interested in a little-known OS X feature capable of automatically putting your Mac to sleep at a time of your choosing. It’s a great “set it and forget it” setting that automates a task that can save you energy and prolong the life of your Mac’s components. Here’s how to schedule your Mac to automatically sleep:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-create-free-ringtones-for-an-iphone/Wed, 02 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-create-free-ringtones-for-an-iphone/The iPhone and Mac make many tasks easy, but creating ringtones is not one of them. You’d think it would be a simple matter to create your own custom ringtones, but it’s not. In fact, many people aren’t even aware that they can create free custom ringtones for their iPhones! We’re here to guide you through the process. This tutorial will show you two ways to use your Mac to create free ringtones for your iPhone: Creating a ringtone from a YouTube video, and creating a ringtone from a song in your iTunes Library.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/setting-up-an-ios-simulator-on-your-mac/Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/setting-up-an-ios-simulator-on-your-mac/Web developers know it’s important to test their websites on every web browser and device possible. And with the growing popularity of the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, it’s only natural that they’ll also want to test their websites on all of those devices. But short of stocking up on a bunch of Apple products, how can developers preview their websites in iOS? Actually, it’s easy. Anybody can do it by installing Apple’s iOS simulator on their Mac for free.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-snmp-on-an-airport-base-station/Mon, 31 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-enable-snmp-on-an-airport-base-station/The AirPort Extreme, AirPort Express, and Time Capsule are excellent wireless base stations, but it can be difficult to know exactly what they’re doing. For instance, you might be interested in knowing how many devices are connected to your base station, or how much bandwidth has been used by all of the connected devices over a certain period of time. To monitor statistics like these, you’ll need to enable something called SNMP, which stands for simple network management protocol.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/the-fab-four-and-other-musical-reflections/Sun, 30 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/the-fab-four-and-other-musical-reflections/No, not that Fab Four. Be patient. Hush. The Sheas just got back from a typically wonderful week on Cape Cod, with a weekend family reunion on Great East Lake in Maine thrown in. Wish you all could have joined us. On the Cape we went to the Barnstable County Fair. More rides than last year, but short on animal stuff (cattle judging, draft horse pulling, etc.) and the entertainment wasn’t ready for prime time.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/install-the-old-airport-utility-in-mountain-lion/Wed, 19 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/install-the-old-airport-utility-in-mountain-lion/Earlier this year, Apple released a new version of AirPort Utility, the application that allows users to set up and maintain the AirPort Extreme and AirPort Express base stations. The updated version, AirPort Utility 6.0, was supposed to streamline the interface and make it easier to set up networks. The only problem was that a number of advanced features went missing. If you’ve been missing the features in the old AirPort Utility application, we have good news: There’s a way to install it in OS X 10.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/high-culture-and-pop-culture/Mon, 17 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/high-culture-and-pop-culture/All the while that I was wrestling with issues reflective of Steve Goodman, Francis Thompson, and Joyce Kilmer, to name three—those people who are known mostly for just one work, be it good (Goodman, Thompson) or not so good (Kilmer)—I was having a running discussion with my friend Joe Kolupke, another professor emeritus and my go-to polymath. I thought I had another couple of really good examples in Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings and Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/metonymy-and-synecdoche/Mon, 17 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/metonymy-and-synecdoche/A while back I wrote about metaphor (Metaphors Be With You) and its poor relation, simile. Now it is time to talk about metonymy and synecdoche. Especially metonymy, which I am determined to pin down once and for all. (Free wrestling metaphor, wonkees!) And it should be so simple. But first let’s back up. Metaphor—“to carry across”—we all know. It’s the identity trope (i.e., figurative identity). If I say that Charlie is a pig, you know that Charlie, though not a real pig, demonstrates the worst that we (unjustly?https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/visiting-apples-campus-what-its-like/Tue, 26 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/visiting-apples-campus-what-its-like/If you’re reading this article, you already know that Apple is much more than a company that creates great products. Apple is a way of life. It’s an inspiration, and to some, a religion. Apple is making history by forever changing the world as we know it. But after you’ve read the articles and biographies and watched the movies and documentaries, you can’t help but wonder about Apple’s headquarters. What’s it like there?https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-send-a-message-to-your-ipad-remotely/Mon, 25 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-send-a-message-to-your-ipad-remotely/Did you misplace your iPad? If you enabled Find My iPad, you can make the iPad play a sound and display a message, increasing the chances that it will be found and returned to you. Note that the iPad must be turned on and connected to a cellular or wireless network for this to work. Of course, this feature also has other potential applications. If you’ve left the iPad with a spouse, friend, or child, you could use this feature to send them an important message.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/turn-your-ipad-into-a-digital-picture-frame/Fri, 22 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/turn-your-ipad-into-a-digital-picture-frame/You know those digital photo frames that create a slideshow of all of the photos on a memory stick? Believe it or not, you can set up your iPad to do the same thing. Using your iPad as a picture frame is a great way to enjoy your photos wherever you go. Just prop up your iPad, tap a button on the lock screen, and sit back and enjoy the pictures.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/tell-apples-mail-when-to-receive-messages/Wed, 20 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/tell-apples-mail-when-to-receive-messages/Apple’s free Mail application is included with every Mac. Just add an account and you’ll be sending and receiving email in no time. But how do you control when the Mail application receives new email messages? This tutorial discusses your options and suggests ways you can configure Mail on your Mac to fit into your lifestyle. Drowning in Email? Enough is Enough! A constant barrage of new email can be distracting.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-hide-the-explicit-label-in-itunes/Tue, 19 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-hide-the-explicit-label-in-itunes/If you listen to a lot of loud, trashy music with “explicit” lyrics (ha, ha), you may have noticed that iTunes displays a special label next to many of your song titles, as shown below. This is a parental control designed to help parents quickly identify and quarantine offensive music in iTunes. Unfortunately for those of you who don’t have children, the explicit label is displayed by default, cluttering up your music library.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-move-your-email-to-another-mac/Mon, 18 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-move-your-email-to-another-mac/If you use Apple’s Mail application, there will probably come a time when you’ll want to move your email messages and email account to another Mac. Maybe you just purchased a new Mac. Or maybe you’ve kept your personal email at work, and you now want to move those emails and that account to your Mac at home. Fortunately, there’s an easy way to move your mail! We’ll assume that your email account is located on only one Mac, and that you do not yet have an email account set up in Apple Mail on the Mac you’ll be moving your email to.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/moving-mail-app-rules-to-a-different-mac/Fri, 15 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/moving-mail-app-rules-to-a-different-mac/So you use Mail.app for email. And you’ve created rules in Mail.app to perform automatic and complex actions on incoming messages. If you’re like most, you probably use rules to filer spam, move messages from certain senders to different folders, execute AppleScripts, and automatically respond to people when you’re out of the office. Which is great! But if you use multiple Macs, or if you purchase a new Mac, you’re faced with a perplexing problem: How do you backup and export Mail.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-benchmark-your-mac/Wed, 13 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-benchmark-your-mac/There’s been a lot of talk recently about how the new MacBook Pros compare to existing Mac models. The new MacBooks are faster, of course. We know because the experts ran a series of tests to benchmark the computers and compare them to older models. But you don’t have to let the experts have all of the fun. With a free tool called Geekbench, you can benchmark your own Mac and compare its performance to other Macs and PCs.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-the-best-dns-servers/Tue, 12 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-the-best-dns-servers/We’ve previously discussed how to change the DNS servers on your Mac, iPad, and AirPort Extreme. But how do you know which DNS servers to use? There are dozens of free DNS providers, and all of them claim to offer the best service. Don’t worry. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to find the best DNS servers, no matter where you’re located or which device you’re using. Why Can’t Anyone Tell Me Which DNS Servers to Use?https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-share-your-itunes-library/Tue, 12 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-share-your-itunes-library/Did you know that you can share the music, movies, books, and podcasts on your Mac with the other users connected to your network? You can. All you have to do is enable a couple of settings in iTunes. It’s an ideal way to let others access your multimedia content, and it’s a solution that works in homes, dormitories, workplaces, and even schools. Here’s how to do it: Open the iTunes application.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/more-one-off-poets/Sun, 10 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/more-one-off-poets/So you say you never heard of “The Hound of Heaven”? Fair enough. In this go-round we get a bit more modern. Well, one of our poets is early 19th century, but the other two are early 20th century. The first poem and poet some of you might not recognize, but another I can guarantee you know, and the third—at least the poem—is also a good bet. Ready? Jenny kissed me when we met,https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/automatically-download-tv-shows-to-your-mac/Fri, 08 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/automatically-download-tv-shows-to-your-mac/So you’ve read the Perl programming language articles here on Macinstruct, and you’re feeling more comfortable with Perl in general. (If you missed them, see Getting Started with Perl and Using CPAN to Extend Perl.) Now you’re wondering how to use this information to do something cool. How about building a solution that automatically downloads TV shows to your Mac? That’s right. With some free tools, a little configuration, and a few hundred lines of Perl, you can automatically download new episodes of TV shows to your Mac.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/punching-up-screen-grabs-with-preview/Thu, 07 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/punching-up-screen-grabs-with-preview/When creating documentation, one of my more time-consuming tasks used to be punching up screen shots with labels, arrows, highlights and whatever. With its ability to mix vector (scalable text, lines and shapes) and bitmap graphics, Adobe’s Fireworks was my favorite tool, though it bordered on software overkill. Recently, I was in a rush to get something wrapped up and posted on a deadline and was nowhere near a copy of Fireworks.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/using-cpan-to-extend-perl-on-mac-os-x/Wed, 06 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/using-cpan-to-extend-perl-on-mac-os-x/So you read Getting Started with Perl on Mac OS X and you’re starting to write little Perl scripts to get things done. You learned a few things along the way, and even though you’ve surely hit some speed bumps, you’re still rearing to go. Today, let’s talk about extending your abilities by installing some modules from CPAN. What is CPAN? CPAN is the “Comprehensive Perl Archive Network” - a collection of over one hundred thousand Perl modules ready to be installed and used by you to extend your Perl chops.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/export-your-airport-extreme-configuration/Mon, 04 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/export-your-airport-extreme-configuration/Setting up an AirPort Extreme is a painstaking process that can take hours or even days. But your work isn’t finished when you get the AirPort Extreme working the way you want it. The last step is exporting your AirPort Extreme’s configuration file to save all of those configuration settings and back them up. If you ever need to reset your AirPort Extreme to the default settings, or if it ever resets accidentally, you can restore your configuration settings by importing the configuration file with the AirPort Utility application.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/import-your-airport-extreme-configuration/Mon, 04 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/import-your-airport-extreme-configuration/So you own an AirPort Extreme and the unthinkable happened: You had to reset the base station to the default settings. All of your network settings have been lost. Now what? If you thought to export your AirPort Extreme configuration before you reset the base station, you can import that configuration file and instantly restore all of your network settings. (If you didn’t export the configuration before the reset, you’ll have to start over and set up the AirPort Extreme again.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/one-off-poets/Sun, 03 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/one-off-poets/“One-off Poets” is the best title I can come up with, because—see Steve Goodman—I am still reluctant to denigrate them with the term “one-hit wonders.” This week I want to return to Ernest Dowson and Francis Thompson, two Victorians who glimmered for a moment and were gone. Next week I want to look at three others who are perhaps more well known today, but, again, for only one work. I admit that this is a tricky business.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-upgrade-your-macbook-pros-ram/Sat, 02 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-upgrade-your-macbook-pros-ram/Upgrading the RAM is one of the cheapest and most effective ways to boost your computer’s overall performance. RAM, or random access memory, stores the code and instructions for OS X and any applications open on your Mac. Installing larger RAM modules in your MacBook Pro will allow you have more applications open at once and perform more tasks simultaneously. For example, you could open a bunch of memory-hogging applications while ripping a CD, watching a DVD, and uploading photos to the Internet - all at the same time.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-upgrade-your-macbooks-hard-drive/Sat, 02 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-upgrade-your-macbooks-hard-drive/ Tip: Do you own a MacBook Pro? Check out two of our other articles: How to Upgrade Your MacBook Pro’s Hard Drive, and How to Upgrade Your MacBook Pro’s RAM. Upgrading your MacBook’s internal hard drive is a simple way to store more documents, music, movies, applications and other files on your new Apple portable. Hard drives (or hard disk drives) are large capacity storage devices which store all of your data - everything from Mac OS X to your latest iTunes music album.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/upgrade-your-macbook-pros-hard-drive/Sat, 02 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/upgrade-your-macbook-pros-hard-drive/Upgrading the hard drive is a cost-effective way to increase your storage space and speed up your MacBook Pro, especially if you purchase a solid-state drive. Hard drives are like processors and other electronic components - their capacity doubles approximately every two years. If you plan on keeping your MacBook Pro for longer than two years, you’ll want to consider upgrading your hard drive at least once. Finding a New Hard Drive There are two different types of drives available: Hard disk drives (HDD) and solid-state drives (SSD).https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/create-a-keyboard-shortcut-for-any-menu-item/Fri, 01 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/create-a-keyboard-shortcut-for-any-menu-item/Keyboard shortcuts are an integral part of Mac OS X, but you may have noticed that not every menu item has one. This can pose a real problem for those of us who like to work fast and efficiently. To access menu items that don’t have shortcuts, you’ll have to use the mouse - a big annoyance that’ll slow you down! Fortunately, Mac OS X allows you to assign a keyboard shortcut to a menu item that doesn’t have one.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/remove-rental-movies-from-an-ipad-or-iphone/Tue, 29 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/remove-rental-movies-from-an-ipad-or-iphone/If you’ve ever rented an iTunes movie on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch, you know that the movie is automatically removed from your device 24 hours after you started watching it. But did you know that you can manually remove movie rentals after you finish watching them? Doing so allows you to free up disk space on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch and store even more music and movies.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/steve-goodman/Mon, 28 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/steve-goodman/I was going to title this wonk “One-Hit Wonders,” but to my mind there is something chintzy about the phrase, something slightly disrespectful, and Steve Goodman deserves a lot better than that. We’ll get to the late Steve Goodman in a minute, which will give you time to try to place the name. Whatever we want to call them, I am thinking of writers, composers, painters—any artists, really—who are known only for one or two pieces.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/swamp-cooler/Sun, 20 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/swamp-cooler/If you are reading this wonk in my neck of the woods, the American Southwest, you can stop right now and go back to Facebook. In fact, wherever the climate is very hot and very dry you, too, can probably skip it, at least if the term “swamp cooler” or “evaporative cooler” is familiar to you. But a swamp cooler was new to me when I came here many years ago* and it underscored the fact that I wasn’t in Kansas (well, Pennsylvania) anymore, Toto.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/where-to-find-saved-pdf-files-on-an-ipad/Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/where-to-find-saved-pdf-files-on-an-ipad/In another tutorial, we discussed how to save PDF files on an iPad. But where do you find the PDF files that you’ve saved on your iPad? They’re stored in the iBooks app, but you might have to change collections to see them. Collections are essentially folders for the books and files stored in iBooks. By default, all PDF files are stored in the PDF collection. If you have a different collection open, you won’t see the files in the other collection.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-minimize-windows-in-slow-motion/Fri, 18 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-minimize-windows-in-slow-motion/Ready to learn a fun trick that has absolutely no practical value whatsoever? A trick that you can use to impress your friends and show off your Mac skills? Then you’ve come to the right tutorial! We’re about to teach you how to minimize windows to the Dock in slow motion. In other words, we’re going to take the default minimize window action and slow it way down by a factor of 100 or so.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/change-an-airport-extremes-dns-servers/Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/change-an-airport-extremes-dns-servers/If you own an AirPort Extreme and use it as a router, you can specify default DNS servers for all of the devices connected to your wireless network. This is a great way to enforce enterprise network policies using OpenDNS, which allows you to implement security and filtering controls. And if you’re a home user, you can protect your children by configuring DNS servers for the entire house and enable parental controls with OpenDNS.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/change-the-background-of-finder-windows/Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/change-the-background-of-finder-windows/Are you tired of seeing the boring white background of the Finder windows? Change it! You can spice up your Desktop by setting a folder’s background to a picture or a solid color. Note that this only works when the layout of the folder’s window is set to the icon view. You won’t see the background if you view the items in the list, column, or cover flow views. Setting a Solid Color Background Here’s how to change the background of a Finder window:https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/lenvoi-emd/Mon, 14 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/lenvoi-emd/Maybe I’m just a wuss after all. After all, I survived EMD as did so many others who were not physically crippled or emotionally scarred by the experience. And it wasn’t the physical labor, the “hoppin’ like a bunny,” that made the pre-load such hell. In fact, I regret now that I didn’t take up serious running until ten years later. With the legs that EMD gave me, I’ll bet I could have run a marathon in under three hours!https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-update-your-ipads-software/Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-update-your-ipads-software/This week Apple released iOS 5.1.1, the newest version of the operating system for iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touch devices. You used to have to connect to a computer with iTunes to install updates, but not anymore. With the “over-the-air” update feature built into iOS, you can use your iPad to download and install the iOS updates while connected to a wireless network. This guide will show you how to update your iPad’s iOS software wirelessly using the over-the-air update feature.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/connecting-a-bluetooth-keyboard-to-an-ipad/Tue, 08 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/connecting-a-bluetooth-keyboard-to-an-ipad/As someone who writes for a living, I need to be able to type fast and accurately. That’s just not possible with the iPad’s Qwerty keyboard. I initially thought the built-in keyboard would work, and that it was just a matter of training myself to use it. But as time went on, I realized that the keyboard was only large enough to fool me into thinking I could type with two hands.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-password-protect-your-ipad/Wed, 02 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-password-protect-your-ipad/Did you know that you can enable password protection and hardware encryption on your iPad? It’s an easy and effective way to protect your private data from prying eyes. After you enable password protection, users will have to enter a password to unlock the iPad or access certain iOS system settings, as shown below. There are a couple different reasons why you would want to do this. If you’re the only person who uses the iPad, you’ll want to keep your email messages, Safari history and bookmarks, and app settings safe and secure when you leave your iPad at home or in the office.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-set-up-a-new-ipad/Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-set-up-a-new-ipad/Last weekend I did something I had never done before: I purchased an iPad for the first time. The process of setting up a new iPad is relatively straightforward, but some of the options can be confusing, especially if you’re new to iOS. (For those who don’t know, iOS is the name of the operating system that runs on the iPad). If you’re unboxing a new iPad right now, this tutorial will guide you through the entire setup process and describe all of the options available.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/hoppin-like-a-bunny/Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/hoppin-like-a-bunny/One problem that I had with the job at EMD—or, rather, that the job had with me—was that, at 33, I was about ten years older than the other guys. Troublemaker. Malcontent. I was bad news in the same way that a 33-year-old draftee would be bad news in the army even if he was as fit as a twenty-something. A twenty-year-old is gung-ho and malleable; a thirty-year-old is just a tad cynical, a pain in the ass.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/untangling-ios-wireless-problems/Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/untangling-ios-wireless-problems/Not long ago, the wireless authentication system at the college where I worked was having issues. It wasn’t a “secure” network per se, but you did need to enter a student or staff login to use it. With the rapid proliferation of handheld devices, it was getting, to say the least, temperamental. Adding to the confusion was a spate of traveling I did that brought my iPhone and me through a variety of airports and hotels that required some form of login to gain access to their public wireless system.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/getting-started-with-perl-on-mac-os-x/Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/getting-started-with-perl-on-mac-os-x/Perl is a widely used programming language developed by Larry Wall in the late 1980’s. Since being originally written as a scripting language to assist in system administration tasks, it has taken off as a popular language for doing everything from low-level systems programming to website scripting. If you have ever thought about getting into programming on your Mac, Perl is a great place to start! Preparing for Perl All you will need for this primer is a text editor, the terminal, and Perl (of course!https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/speed-up-safari-lose-the-previews/Mon, 23 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/speed-up-safari-lose-the-previews/One of the first things most of us learned back when Safari 4 appeared was how to turn off the “Top Sites” feature (via the General tab of Safari’s Preferences) and return to our normal home page. Safari does a lot of work to collect those cute little thumbnails of the web pages, store them in a hard-to-find folder and organize them in a way they can be quickly retrieved. In fact, if you click over to the History view in the Top Sites window, you’ll see that Safari has industriously captured a thumbnail image of seemingly every page you ever visited.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/easy-money/Sun, 22 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/easy-money/I have had the usual run of jobs to support my real life. I have driven tractors, forklifts, and trucks—dump trucks, delivery trucks, garbage trucks. I have done farm work and construction work and warehouse work. I’m not averse to physical labor, but when my grown-up job, teaching, finally became my career, I welcomed that development. What I’m writing about here is the worst job I ever had, the job from hell.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/absolutely/Sun, 15 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/absolutely/Is your world drab and drear, Bunky? Do people snicker when you slink into a room? Has your love life been on hold since the Clinton administration? Well, you don’t have to be that guy! Doctor Shea is here with a cure, my man! With Dr. Shea’s help, the sun will break through, men will respect and envy you, and the women…oo la la! Whence comes this salvation, you wonder? Two words: absolute phrase!https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/dingbats/Sun, 08 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/dingbats/Fuck. There, that’s out of the way. We gather today, brethren and sistren, to talk about obscenity, vulgarity, cursing. Bad language not in the grammatical sense but in the moral sense. I warn you that we may get to talking dirty. A news story brought this to mind. Some people want to take another look at the strictures that broadcast media labor under. On cable and satellite TV practically anything goes, but on broadcast TV if a star at an awards show releases the so-called f-bomb—as has happened more than once—heads might roll.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/recommendations/Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/recommendations/The letter of recommendation, usually for a student applying to grad school or for a new PhD applying for her first real teaching job, is a fact of academic life and a venerable tradition. In the past two weeks I have written three, though two were for the same student and were essentially variations on a theme for two similar programs. Over the years I have written countless recommendations. I hope they helped.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/indiana-shea-and-the-ruta-maya/Sun, 25 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/indiana-shea-and-the-ruta-maya/I am beginning this wonk in longhand, sitting by the pool at the Palma Real condominiums south of Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo, Mexico. A stiff ocean breeze is making those royal palms sway, but it is not unpleasant. Dear me no, it is not unpleasant at all. Just past the pool and the palapas,* the Caribbean laps sand which, more than anything, resembles powdered sugar. The condo’s statue of Neptune, in fetching premature verdigris, presides over the scene, hailing passing ships.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-your-mac-as-a-wireless-router/Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-your-mac-as-a-wireless-router/Did you know that you can turn your Mac into a wireless router for your home or office? This is a great option if you have cable or DSL service, but have yet to purchase a wireless router! These instructions will show you how to connect several computers or devices - such as an iPhone or iPad - to the Internet via your Mac’s wireless network. The best part is that you can save big money on expensive devices like the AirPort Extreme and AirPort Express by setting up your Mac to do the same thing!https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/seventy/Tue, 28 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/seventy/“Inside every old person is a young person wondering what the hell happened.” This 3rd of March Mrs. Shea’s little boy will notch his seventieth year on God’s green Earth. I hesitated to write a wonk about it. Having already written at least three wonks on aging, I didn’t want to risk becoming a garrulous old bore on the subject. But I was working on a wonk that wasn’t working out, and reaching the Biblical allotment is just too tempting a subject.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/olio-oleo/Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/olio-oleo/Olio or oleo? The two are staples in crossword puzzles, and I can’t keep them straight. One is a butter substitute, the other a melange, a potpourri, a miscellany. This wonk of course will be the latter, but which word applies, you ask? Hey, look it up. I can’t be doing everything for you. But Happy New Year. We have survived another one. And I promise that if this is a retrospective, it will be only accidentally so.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-monitor-your-macs-memory-usage/Mon, 02 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-monitor-your-macs-memory-usage/Imagine driving a vehicle with no gauges on the dashboard. You wouldn’t know how fast the car was going, how much fuel it had left, or whether or not the engine was about to overheat. In short, you’d be driving blind - hoping, by chance, that everything would just work out okay. As ludicrous as this scenario sounds, millions of Mac users do essentially the same thing every day. Most people have no idea how much RAM is installed in their Mac, or how much memory it is currently using.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-update-your-macs-software/Fri, 30 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-update-your-macs-software/Updating Apple’s software on your Mac is an important maintenance task that you should perform regularly. Using the latest versions of Mac OS X and Apple’s applications can protect your Mac against malicious attacks, improve sluggish system performance, and fix bugs that can cause applications to randomly crash. This tutorial will show you how to automatically and manually update the Apple software on your computer. Automatically Check for Apple Software Updates You can manually check for updates with your Mac’s built-in Software Update tool.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-connect-a-hard-drive-to-the-airport-extreme/Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-connect-a-hard-drive-to-the-airport-extreme/You can use an AirPort Extreme Base Station to create a wireless network for the computers and devices in your home or office. But did you know that you can also connect a USB hard drive to an AirPort Extreme? Doing so effectively creates a network drive that can be accessed by all of the users connected to the wireless network. It’s a great way to share documents, photos, music, and movies with the other people on your network.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-install-windows-8-using-vmware-fusion/Tue, 27 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-install-windows-8-using-vmware-fusion/Maybe you’ve heard the buzz about Windows 8, the new operating system being developed by Microsoft. It’s not for sale yet, but if you’re feeling adventurous, you can install Windows 8 for free in a virtual machine on your Mac. Using a product called VMware Fusion (free trial, $49.99) is a great way to test Windows 8 in a sandboxed environment. Here’s how to install Windows 8 on your Mac using VMware Fusion:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-connect-to-hidden-wireless-networks/Mon, 26 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-connect-to-hidden-wireless-networks/Need to connect your Mac to a wireless network? You know the drill. Click on the wireless menu bar icon, select an available network, and your Mac automatically connects. But what about connecting to wireless networks that are hidden? The hidden wireless networks won’t appear in the list, so you’ll need to use a different method to connect to one of those networks. Here’s how to connect your Mac to a hidden wireless network:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-hide-your-airport-extreme-network/Mon, 26 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-hide-your-airport-extreme-network/Own an AirPort Extreme Base Station? Congratulations! You have one of the most secure network devices in the industry. The AirPort Extreme’s WPA2 Personal and WPA2 Enterprise encryption options are the best available. But there’s another powerful security feature that you’ll want to enable on AirPort Extreme: The ability to “hide” the wireless network so that users can’t see it in wireless menu. (In technical terms, this is known as disabling or hiding the AirPort Extreme SSID.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-set-up-the-airport-extreme/Sun, 25 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-set-up-the-airport-extreme/If you’re looking to set up a fast and secure wireless network in your home or office, look no further than the AirPort Extreme. It’s easy to set up and use - just take it out of the box and plug it in. But there are some initial configuration steps required to get a wireless network up and running smoothly. This tutorial provides all of the information you’ll need to complete the initial AirPort Extreme setup required for creating a wireless network and sharing Internet access.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/dear-me/Sat, 24 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/dear-me/There is a book just out entitled Dear Me: A Letter to My Sixteen-Year-Old Self. The instigator, Joseph Galliano, invited many celebrities to do just that, to write such a letter. (To his credit, the profits will go not to Galliano but to a charity.) This letter business is not a new idea, but as a writing prompt it is certainly a cut above “My Pet Peeve.” It invites somber reflection, wiseacre humor, and much in between.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/check-the-available-hard-drive-space-on-a-mac/Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/check-the-available-hard-drive-space-on-a-mac/Ever wonder how much free space is available on your Mac’s hard disk or partitions? It’s easy to check in OS X. Plus, if your Mac is running Mac OS 10.7 or later, the interface shows which types of files are taking up the most space, a feature that could help you track down space-hogging files and applications.  Tip: Your startup disk should have some free space available - ideally 10% of the disk should be free.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-hide-and-show-purchases-in-the-mac-app-store/Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-hide-and-show-purchases-in-the-mac-app-store/Did you purchase an “embarrassing” application from the Mac App Store? Want to hide the fact that you downloaded it? Thanks to an obscure feature, you can. The Mac App Store lets you hide applications you’ve purchased so they don’t show up in the Purchases list. It’s a great way to cover your tracks so other users in your house can’t see exactly what you downloaded.  Tip: Hiding a purchase in the Mac App Store does not uninstall the application.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-reinstall-apps-from-the-mac-app-store/Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-reinstall-apps-from-the-mac-app-store/The Mac App Store is a good way to find applications for your Mac - maybe a little too good, in fact. The applications you download from the App Store can start to accumulate, and over time you may need to start deleting them. But feelings change. If you want to reinstall an application that you downloaded from the App Store and then later deleted, this is the tutorial for you.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-burn-a-data-cd-or-dvd-in-mac-os-x/Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-burn-a-data-cd-or-dvd-in-mac-os-x/Burning a data a CD or DVD is no longer as popular as it once was. Chalk it up to high-speed Internet connections, cloud storage services, USB drives, and other technologies that have made massive data transfer easy and dirt-cheap. Nevertheless, there are still times when you’ll need to burn a data CD or DVD with your Mac. The resulting disc can be used on Mac, Windows, and Linux computers. Here’s how to burn a data CD or DVD in Mac OS X:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-gift-an-itunes-playlist/Mon, 19 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-gift-an-itunes-playlist/iTunes gift cards make great stocking stuffers, but did you know that you can also give one of your iTunes playlists as a gift? Here’s how it works: Create a playlist full of the songs you’d like to give and then follow the instructions below to purchase the songs in the iTunes Store. The recipient will be emailed a special iTunes code to download all of the songs in the playlist.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/reposition-windows-for-multiple-monitors-with-applescript/Mon, 19 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/reposition-windows-for-multiple-monitors-with-applescript/If you frequently switch between different displays, you know organizing your windows when switching displays can be a real pain. I use my MacBook Pro frequently by itself, and I also have a 20" external display on my desk at home. Additionally, I have a weird affliction of window placement OCD. Admiring Stay, but not prepared to spend $15, I wrote the following AppleScript that will resize and organize my windows when I switch my display configuration.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-burn-a-music-cd-in-itunes/Sun, 18 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-burn-a-music-cd-in-itunes/iTunes is one of Apple’s most exciting and practical applications. It allows you to collect and catalog thousands of songs, television shows, podcasts, and movies - and its interface is simple enough for everyone to understand. But don’t let the sleek and shiny appearance fool you: iTunes is a powerful piece of software that is capable of much more. Burning your own music CDs with iTunes is fun, fast and free.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-restore-from-a-superduper-backup/Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-restore-from-a-superduper-backup/You made backups with a third-party application called SuperDuper! Now maybe the time has come to transfer your backup onto another hard drive. Maybe the unthinkable happened and your primary hard drive failed. Or maybe you just replaced your primary hard drive with a new, larger drive. Whatever the case, you need restore from your SuperDuper! backup.  Tip: If you haven’t yet used SuperDuper! to back up your hard drive, learn how by reading Back Up (Clone) Your Mac’s Hard Drive with SuperDuper!https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-rip-dvds-with-handbrake/Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-rip-dvds-with-handbrake/One could argue that the age of digital media truly began in the mid-1990s, when the MP3 standard of audio compression gained popularity, allowing users to rip vast quantities of music to their computers. Personal MP3 players soon followed, and Apple managed to resurrect itself through the powerful iTunes + iPod combination. With the release of the fifth-generation iPod in 2005, the age of digital video began in earnest. Along with CDs, computer users sought a method for ripping their DVDs into conveniently smaller files.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-schedule-superduper-backups/Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-schedule-superduper-backups/Automation is an important part of any backup system. With a third-party application called SuperDuper!, you can schedule automatic backups of your Mac’s hard drive. This is a great feature that takes all of the guesswork out of making backups - you don’t have to do anything except make sure that your backup drive is connected to your Mac. There are two ways to schedule SuperDuper! backups. You can set backups to occur at a specific time on certain days of the week, or whenever you connect an existing SuperDuper!https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-update-a-superduper-backup/Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-update-a-superduper-backup/Regularly updating the backups of your Mac’s hard drive is essential. If you’ve already created a backup of your hard drive with an application called SuperDuper!, it’s easy to update. The smart update feature allows SuperDuper! to compare the current files on your hard drive with the files in your backup. If the files have been modified, SuperDuper! copies those files - and those files only - to the backup drive.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/back-up-clone-your-macs-hard-drive-with-superduper/Tue, 13 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/back-up-clone-your-macs-hard-drive-with-superduper/Backup solutions for Mac OS X come and go, but an application called SuperDuper! ($27.95, free trial available) remains one of the best third-party Mac backup applications available. SuperDuper! makes an exact copy of your hard drive, which means you can use the backup drive to boot your computer if your primary hard drive fails. It’s easy to use - all you need is a backup hard drive that has enough space for all of the files on your primary hard disk.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-password-protect-your-mac/Tue, 13 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-password-protect-your-mac/Your computer contains personal documents, photos, email messages, and even a log of your Internet activities. Password protecting your Mac keeps this private information safe and allows you to control who accesses your computer. You should follow these steps whether you you work primarily from work, home, or a cafe. No one should ever have unauthorized access to your Mac! Here’s how to password protect your Mac: Disable automatic login to ensure that only authorized users can use the computer.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-test-your-superduper-backup/Tue, 13 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-test-your-superduper-backup/If you use SuperDuper! to back up your hard drive, you should test the backup disk to make sure it worked. (See Back Up (Clone) Your Mac’s Hard Drive with SuperDuper! for instructions on backing up your computer with SuperDuper!) Since SuperDuper! creates an exact copy of your primary hard drive, you can set the backup drive as your startup disk and try booting your computer from it. If all goes well, your computer will start up from the backup disk and look exactly like it normally does.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-create-user-accounts-in-mac-os-x/Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-create-user-accounts-in-mac-os-x/Everyone who uses your Mac should have his or her own account. It’s a practical way to keep personal documents, settings, and applications separate and secure. Plus, an account limits a user’s ability to access system files and settings that can change your Mac’s configuration. Creating User Accounts in Mac OS X Here’s how to create an account for a user: From the Apple menu, select System Preferences. Select Users & Groups.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-automatic-login/Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-disable-automatic-login/When you set up your Mac for the first time, you create an administrator account that automatically logs in when you turn on your computer - a convenient feature that poses a major security risk if you regularly use your Mac in public, or if other people use your computer. For maximum security, you’ll want to disable automatic login, even if you’re the only person who uses your Mac. From the Apple menu, select System Preferences.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/roadie/Sun, 11 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/roadie/I’m in love. I don’t mean with the Longsuffering Diana, although that is certainly true and forever will be. And our kids and grandkids are so rooted in my heart as never to be extirpated. But I find myself in love with 23 pounds of canine named Roadie. Never thought we’d have a dog again, and I have a good story for you. A little over a year ago I’m following my son-in-law in a two-car caravan on a miserable morning, overcast, drizzly, and cold, when I see this little dog worrying some roadkill right in the middle of the highway.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-stream-movies-from-mac-to-roku/Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-stream-movies-from-mac-to-roku/The Roku video player is a tiny box that connects to your television and allows you to stream video content from the Internet. It’s one of Apple TV’s direct competitors, but with an entry-level model starting at $49.99, it costs only half as much. Purchasing a Roku is a great way to stream Netflix, Hulu, and video content from dozens of other providers to your television. It’s also a popular choice among Mac users.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/calvin-untroped/Sun, 04 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/calvin-untroped/Readers of this space know that I teach classical tropes every fall (see “Tropes”). The basic assignment that I give my trope babies is a “lemon squeeze” of a passage—identify all the tropes that you can—and I usually pick out something that is reliably rich with tropes: poetic prose perhaps, or oratorical prose (Lincoln, Kennedy, King, etc.). But tropes are where you find them and the other week the trope babies and I had a go at one of my all time favorite comic strips, just one example from Bill Watterson’s brilliant Calvin and Hobbes series.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-install-ubuntu-11-10-using-vmware-fusion/Fri, 02 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-install-ubuntu-11-10-using-vmware-fusion/Everyone is talking about Ubuntu, the popular open-source operating system that’s easy to install and use. Trying out this Linux distribution on your Mac is easy. With an application called VMware Fusion, you can create a “computer within a computer” and run Ubuntu in a virtual machine on your Mac. Here’s how to install Ubuntu 11.10 in OS X using VMware Fusion: Download Ubuntu 11.10 from the Ubuntu website. It’s a free download.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-remember-birthdays-with-your-mac/Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-remember-birthdays-with-your-mac/If you dread remembering birthdays like we do, you’ll be happy to know that you can use Address Book and iCal to store birthdays for all of your contacts and display an alert on the screen when one rolls around. After you follow these instructions and set the whole thing up, the entire process will be automated. All you’ll have to do is enter your contact’s birthdays! The bad news is that you’ll no longer have an excuse for not sending birthday cards.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-burn-an-iso-disc-image-on-your-mac/Mon, 28 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-burn-an-iso-disc-image-on-your-mac/Many operating systems and software applications - like Ubuntu Linux and the Windows 8 Developer Preview - are available for download as ISO images. You know you’re dealing with one of these archives when you see the .iso file extension. ISO images can be burned to CD or DVD for use on other computers or sharing with others. You can also use ISO images with virtualization applications like VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/steve-wozniak-interview/Mon, 28 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/steve-wozniak-interview/Editor’s Note: This “interview” was actually a series of questions that I emailed to Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, on December 31, 1999. While the rest of the world was ringing in the New Year or worrying about Y2K, Woz was typing up his responses. He responded about two hours after I emailed him! If the questions seem a little odd, that’s because they are. I was a junior in high school at the time, and I had no idea how to conduct an interview, let alone what to ask one of the greats of the computing era.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/crazy-grammar/Sun, 27 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/crazy-grammar/Because we use words, we must use grammar to string them together. “Grammar” has a telling history, being related to “glamour” and “grimoire.” Glamour has come down some in the world, referring now mostly to Tinsel Town denizens, jet-setters, all that social fluff. But originally it referred to magic, to witchery. Similarly, a grimoire was a sorcerer’s handbook, a book of spells. Hocus Pocus, Dominocus (a parody of church Latin) and all that.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/a-rose-by-any-other-name/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/a-rose-by-any-other-name/In a recent column Tom and Ray Magliozzi, my favorite car guys, said of a certain unethical mechanic that he had earned a place on their “fecal roster.” I chuckled all morning over that felicitous rephrasing of “sh*t list,” and even sent it to a couple of friends. I am calling that a euphemism, and I would like to talk about euphemism this week, along with its evil twin, dysphemism. We seem incapable of calling a spade a spade.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/argumentums/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/argumentums/At some point in the tropes course—last week, this time around—we study the argumentums, which are great things to hang tropes on. I’m talking about such familiar terms as argumentum ad hominem, argumentum ad populum, argumentum ad ignorantium, and so forth (no, I am not going to add ad nauseam, although it seems sometimes that it ought to be included). The first thing to know is that these are not valid arguments in the syllogistic sense (all birds have two legs, Socrates has two legs, therefore Socrates is a bird…something like that; I was never real good at it).https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/big-stuff-deep-stuff-heavy-stuff/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/big-stuff-deep-stuff-heavy-stuff/We live among immensities of time and space. Sometimes the question is not so much how we manage to grasp those immensities, but how we entertain that knowledge without just blanking out, clicking off, like a spaniel trying to understand quadratic equations (woof?). What started me thinking about this was a couple of recent science articles guaranteed to titillate us laymen. In one, astronomers think they have discovered a galaxy—make that “evidence of a galaxy”—that is the earliest, which is to say oldest, that has been seen so far.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/do-you-feel-a-draft/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/do-you-feel-a-draft/In a typically brilliant Gary Larson cartoon, we find a deer behind a tree, hiding from a hunter in the near distance. Panicked, the deer is saying to himself, “He is definitely shooting at me! I’ve gotta think: do I know this guy?” We laugh because we seldom see it that way—a hunter has no personal grudge or vendetta against a deer that he kills. But in fact random killing is a fact of life—or rather, death—and nowhere more so than in war.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/fiat-lux/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/fiat-lux/Light. The first Light. “Let there be Light,” said the Lord God, and it was so. Light is both humble and holy, practical and profound. Modern artificial light, electric light, is a wonder that we take for granted. I like to remind myself from time to time what a small miracle it is to get up in the pitch (wonderful word, that) dark, hit a switch, and instantly flood a room with light.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/final-doings-danube/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/final-doings-danube/So on the eleventh of July, the Sheas and the senior Dinsmores (aka Bob and Pat) got on a Lufthansa Airbus at Boston’s Logan Airport for a long hop to Frankfurt, a short hop to Budapest, and the beginning of their Danube cruise. Ports of call would be Budapest, Vienna, Passau, and Regensburg, with special stops for the monasteries at Melk and at Weltenburg, in the Danube Gorge. We would leave the Danube at Kelheim, the beginning of the gorge, making our last leg the Danube-Main Canal to Nuremberg.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/giants-in-the-earth/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/giants-in-the-earth/While I was writing about the Neanderthals, something else kept flitting through my mind: that mysterious and startling line in Genesis 6:4. “There were giants in the earth in those days.” What’s up with that? Well, just a few hours’ research shows the Neanderthal story to be simple and straightforward compared to this particular tangled web. Let me back up. Here (KJV) are verses 1 through 4: And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born unto them, [T]hat the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/great-wits-are-near-to-madness-close-allied/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/great-wits-are-near-to-madness-close-allied/Many years ago—so many that the card catalogue was physically a card catalogue—I was trolling through it idly and came upon the intriguing title—Gravity and Levity—of a book by a psychiatrist named Alan McGlashan. It is an interesting little collection of essays that roam the borderland between medicine and mysticism. What mystified me was that it was shelved not in our main UNM library but over in our Science and Engineering library, and then I realized that someone had taken the title literally, as in the force that large bodies exert, and its opposite, as in lighter-than-air gases.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/hammer/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/hammer/Most writing taught in schools is fairly conservative. Some leeway might be allowed depending on the crowd (sorry about the rhyme…or maybe not, as we’ll see), but the usual requirements include spelling correctly, eschewing sentence fragments and the dreaded comma splice, and so forth: all the things that your equally dreaded freshman composition teacher enforces with an iron fist and a red pen. But there is a subversive tradition in the history of writing in English.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/me-and-charlie-rose/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/me-and-charlie-rose/(I seldom stay up late enough to watch Charlie Rose on PBS, but when I do I am always reminded of how much I’ve been missing. Charlie is an excellent interviewer, I think because he has a genuine interest in his guests and in ideas and events. He is definitely and definitively connected. Add in that dulcet North Carolina accent and you have a real treat. His guests the other night were Tom Brokaw and Calvin Trillin—Charlie doesn’t traffic in the usual Tinsel Town fluff—both pushing their latest books.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/metaphors-be-with-you/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/metaphors-be-with-you/Yesterday in the tropes course we talked about that most basic and ubiquitous of tropes, metaphor. Unlike, say, epitrope, everyone has heard of metaphor (which doesn’t even need to be italicized anymore) and has a rough idea of what it is and does. Metaphor translates as “to carry across”: in practice it means to liken something to something else. It has been called the identity trope: an explicit likening (“My love is like a red, red rose”) is a simile; an implicit likening, which looks like an identity (“Charlie is a pig!https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/more-summer-doings-wigwams-and-lightships/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/more-summer-doings-wigwams-and-lightships/This was a summer of water. Between the Ohio River cruise and the Danube excursion, we headed west to the Pacific in Southern California and then—with an interlude up in Taos, New Mexico–east to the Atlantic on Cape Cod. Faithful readers know what a fan of SoCal I have always been, both for the trip and the destination (see “SoCal I” and “SoCal II”). Because the Beast is a bit cramped for Diana’s comfort and because the air conditioner makes it overheat, we took Wanda, our faithful old Honda CR-V .https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/moxie/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/moxie/(I hope you will indulge me once again, my friends. This essay was written over twenty years ago, but I hope it has stood the test of time. Also, it is long enough that I have chosen to break it in two. Here’s the first part.) One morning a few months ago I caught myself saying, to no one in particular and about whom I can’t recall, “You know, that took a lot of moxie.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/moxie-ii/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/moxie-ii/(Yes, this is Moxie, Part Two, in which your intrepid wonker faces his fate!) At this point, nostalgia turns mean. My Moxie reminiscing had followed a docile pattern, predicated on the sure assumption that the Moxie enterprise had gone belly-up in the late ‘40’s, that this elixir of the Puritans had gone to join the shadows. But ten minutes’ research revealed that the Moxie makers were alive, well, and now based outside of Atlanta, Georgia, the soft drink capital of this country.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/neanderthals-in-books/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/neanderthals-in-books/So Neanderthals fascinate us, for reasons both silly and serious. We have had our share of schlocky, forgettable movies, often with hunky “cave men” and their scantily clad, big breasted mates battling not only wooly mammoths but dinosaurs (yeah, right!). There have been many depictions of Neanderthals or putative Neanderthals in books, too. Three come to mind, one that is mainstream entertainment and two that are more serious and—as far as possible—realistic depictions.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/neanderthals-in-nooks/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/neanderthals-in-nooks/Neanderthals may have been—or perhaps are—the hardiest critters to have ever come down the pike. They live on in books, in movies, and in our imaginings, tens of thousands of years after they presumably checked out. But more to the point of this wonk, they seem to keep popping up in the (hairy) flesh! The two most famous examples are Bigfoot (aka Sasquatch) in our Pacific Northwest and the Yeti or Abominable Snowman in the Himalayas.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/no-pain-no-gain/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/no-pain-no-gain/Anyone who ever turned out for high school sports has heard the old adage “No pain, no gain.” Having heard it, a person seldom forgets it, mainly because “No pain, no gain” expresses the Spartan ideal so neatly. As a memorable example of locker-room philosophy, it is right up there with “When the going gets tough, the tough get going,” and “If you can’t bear up, bear down.” But if we take a hard look at it, I think we will find that this hoary adage is true only in a very limited way.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/notes-on-the-hereafter/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/notes-on-the-hereafter/The Sweet—or not so sweet—Bye and Bye has been in the news lately. There was of course Harold Camping’s prediction that the Rapture would happen on the 21st of May. Obviously it didn’t, but now he predicts that the Rapture, and the Destruction, will occur on the 21st of next October. Sort of a package deal. We’ll see. At my age, I don’t sign up for extended warranties or magazine subscriptions, so I’m set.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/once-more-to-the-lake-and-the-river-and-the-oceans/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/once-more-to-the-lake-and-the-river-and-the-oceans/Time to give summer a nudge. Or maybe, since it’s close to triple digits most afternoons, a shove. Fall won’t be here until late September, but I’m already ready for it. I’m also ready for the routine of fall. Twenty students have signed up for my classical tropes course, and this old hambone can’t wait to get back behind the lectern. Still, summer was good even though Albuquerque is slowly turning into Phoenix (climate change, anyone?https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/oops/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/oops/So the trope babies and I were having a grand time analyzing Mark Antony’s famous speech in Julius Caesar (Power to the People). Such a grand time, in fact, that I decided that we should have a whack at Brutus’s speech that precedes it. So we did and, caught up in the spirit, I decided to read the whole play. I hope that’s not quite as derelict as it sounds. I had read the play once, but in high school, and one forgets much in half a century.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/patience/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/patience/Patience is a virtue / Have it if you can / Never in a woman / And seldom in a man. Well, whoever said that was a misogynist of the first water. Seems to me that women are much more patient than men. But I digress—without even having established a point to digress from. What got me thinking about patience was watching my goldfish under the ice the other morning. We just had a cold snap here in the Duke City, making for about three inches of ice on the little goldfish pond in the back yard.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/power-to-the-people/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/power-to-the-people/The heavyweight of all the argumentums, it seems to me, is the argumentum ad populum, the appeal to the crowd, to their passions and biases. If you need your rabble roused and you are an accomplished word man, ad populum will do the trick. What makes it so versatile, as we shall see, is that it often drags in other argumentums, especially ad misericordiam and ad hominem. Long before sociologists began to study crowd psychology, orators knew well how to exploit it.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/rollin-on-the-rivers-and-other-doings-of-the-summertime-sheas/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/rollin-on-the-rivers-and-other-doings-of-the-summertime-sheas/The old wonker is back, after a very busy summer of traveling. I think the Long-suffering Diana and I—or at least I—were gone more than we were home, and I appreciate Matt’s having suggested that I take the summer off.* It was a good break, but I look forward now to banging out more wonks, teaching my classical tropes course, and, since Albuquerque persists in turning into Phoenix, getting a break from the summer heat.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/shining-heroes-and-dastardly-villains/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/shining-heroes-and-dastardly-villains/Can you stand one more wonk on argumentum ad populum? That’s the spirit. After this one I will put my hobby horse in the stable and bar the door. What interests me especially about ad populum is that there is no one strategy to associate it with, as for example with ad vericundiam, where you try to impress the audience with so-called expert testimony, or ad ignorantiam, where you hold that a proposition is true—Obama was born in Kenya—because no one has proven it false to your satisfaction.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/shrink-rap/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/shrink-rap/“Magic words of poof, poof piffles make me just as small as Sniffles.” (“Mary Jane and [her mouse friend] Sniffles,” a comic book series from my long lost childhood) We are all drawn to the miniature. Ships (in or out of bottles), toy poodles (and then teacup poodles!), doll houses, model airplanes that can actually fly, Matchbook cars, toy soldiers. Our folklore is rife with tiny human-like creatures: pixies, fairies, elves, leprechauns.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/small-world/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/small-world/“But it is what is left from little lives, well enough lived, that we can carry with us most easily when the lives have passed, lovely miniatures that ride lightly in the corner of a pocket and fit in the cup of our hand.” (Tom Teepen, syndicated columnist) I see by the paper that Guinness has given the palm to the world’s smallest cow, a bovine about the size of an ovine (sorry, couldn’t resist).https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/smorgasbord/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/smorgasbord/Time again to clean off the workbench. So, in no particular order… I hated to leave the topic of miniatures, and I got some good feedback, too. Joe calls my attention to nanotechnology, a big (pun intended) recent development. Scientists are getting so savvy at the molecular level that they have developed, for example, a one-molecule engine. (I think that’s what I had in my Geo Metro.) Now THAT’s a miniature!https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/tears-idle-tears/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/tears-idle-tears/Let’s hear it for sadness. No need to whoop and holler, but let’s hear it anyway. Sadness is sadly underrated. Let me quickly say that I am certainly not talking about depression, and if you have ever been clinically depressed you know what I mean. Depression is a thirsty leech on the soul and we will speak no more about it. Sadness—the sadness that I am talking about—is a condition of living and can affect even the determined optimist.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/the-neanderthals-next-door/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/the-neanderthals-next-door/An excellent article on Neanderthals in the current issue of The New Yorker (August 15 and 22) got me thinking about this creature from the dawn of our history. That’s easy to do. I don’t know anyone who can resist imagining these very early humans—for humans they now appear to have been—and speculating on what they were like, what became of them, and—on the fringes—whether they still survive somewhere. In one sense they do indeed survive, if we can believe the latest findings.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/the-wages-of-sin/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/the-wages-of-sin/This was supposed to be a lark, an easy summer wonk. Perhaps an account of my week in Louisville reading the Advance Placement essays, and then of our road trip to SoCal to visit son Dan and some old Albuquerque friends who recently moved to San Diego. And then the fecal matter collided with the oscillating device. I refer to the astounding scandal here at UNM, the fascinating saga of the “Southwest Companions.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/theft/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/theft/A few nights ago—early morning, actually—a friend of mine had a good-sized ceramic pot stolen from his front stoop, one of a matched pair. Neighbors coming home in the small hours surprised the thief before he could get the other one onto his truck. The slamming of the tailgate woke Charles up, but by the time he had got his bathrobe on and got out the front door, the guy was gone.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/this-that-and-the-other-thing/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/this-that-and-the-other-thing/Ok, we’re done with the argumentums, and I thank you for indulging me. To make it up to you, none of that will be on the test, ok? This week a potpourri, a grab bag, some stuff that I have been filing away but none of enough moment for a full wonk. At least I don’t think so. Best put on your Kevlar vest, because we are talking bullet points.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/tiger-mother/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/tiger-mother/By now almost everyone has heard of Amy Chua, the self-proclaimed “Tiger Mother.” She is the Chinese-American mother and Yale law professor who just published Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. When an excerpt from the book appeared last month in the Wall Street Journal, all hell broke loose. But in case you have been off-planet since the new year dawned, here are some highlights. Her daughters, Sophia and Louisa (Lulu), are not allowed sleepovers, playdates, TV, or computer games—the sorts of diversions that most parents take for granted.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/vachel-lindsay-prairie-troubador/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/vachel-lindsay-prairie-troubador/I have a old friend who lives in Liberal, Kansas, a brave little outpost at a crossroads just north of the Oklahoma panhandle. Being an Albuquerque sophisticate, I like to tease Bill for living out in the boondocks. And so it was that, lying awake in the small hours last week, I remembered some lines from a poem: Of the babies born at midnight In the sod huts of lost hope,https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/when-metaphors-go-bad/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/when-metaphors-go-bad/Last week (Metaphors Be With You) I signed off with a question: “If metaphor is a strategy for thought, what are we to make of [mixed, butchered, metaphors]?” I’m still trying to answer my own question. What does “Spare the rod, spoil the broth” tell us about the person who offers us that piece of garbled wisdom? And that fellow who protested, “It’s not rocket surgery!”…what, as your mother used to wonder, was he thinking?https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/words-words-words/Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/words-words-words/Again I wake up in the small hours, but instead of waking up with a snippet from a Vachel Lindsay poem in my head, I wake up with a word. The word is “rollicking” and all of a sudden I dislike it intensely. “What a stupid word!” I hiss into the darkness: “What a stupid, fatuous word!” You don’t hear the word in conversation, thank goodness, unless someone is being intentionally fey, and I for one would put a quick stop to that conversation.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/madison/Sun, 06 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/madison/The other day I discovered a wonderful cache of old letters, and I would like to share some with you. This one has to do with Diana’s family’s place in Madison, Ohio, on the shore of Lake Erie, where we went every year when the kids were growing up. It seems a wonderful celebration of summer. I hope you enjoy this wonk, and enjoy this other summer that has come round again.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/mappa-mundi/Tue, 01 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/mappa-mundi/“Map” is a strange word. Broad-voweled but abrupt, it rhymes with yap, zap, slap, clap, and so on. It might be an acronym (Mercator Area Projection?) or the call of an ill-tempered tropical bird (“That infernal mapping kept us awake all night!”). In fact, it comes from the medieval Latin mappa, meaning a napkin, a cloth. Mappa Mundi means map of the world. To put something on the map is to make it famous; to wipe it off the map is to obliterate it.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/maps/Wed, 26 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/maps/I love maps. I don’t even have to leave my recliner to haul up my eight pound world atlas (oof!) or my USA/Canada/Mexico road atlas. Should I see some place mentioned in the morning paper—Storm Lake, Iowa, say—I will grab the road atlas and have a looksee. Just to see, and maybe imagine my being there, imagine the Hawkeyes who live there, imagine what the campus of Buena Vista University looks like and wonder how a town of 9973 (in 2006) can support a university.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/pandora/Wed, 12 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/pandora/Quite often there is something new at the stump in the bosque. Last week it was that rosary; on tomorrow’s run I’ll probably find something else. About a month ago, I found this note, protected from the elements with plastic: Letter to the Cross Remover To the person who removed the cross from our stump and who may or may not be the person who removed an earlier cross from the stump that a trail worker carved years ago to remember a fallen loved one and to create a place for others to meditate and pray.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/holy-mackerel/Mon, 26 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/holy-mackerel/The bala haunts me. I mean the bala shark I wrote about last week. For twenty years he has resided in our living room fish tank. Twenty years. Back and forth (or, in a daring reversal, forth and back; actually he just hangs still, mostly). Think what has happened in that time. Four presidential administrations. The fall of the Berlin Wall. 9/11. Our two kids’ growing up, suffering through their adolescence, and leaving the nest.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/stump/Sun, 25 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/stump/Along my current running route in the Rio Grande bosque, not far from where Borghi, our late cat, rests, is a modest little stump. A foot and a half high, perhaps, and maybe seven inches across. It is not even cut cleanly through: though it definitely was sawed, the sawyer seems to have got discouraged at some point and tried again from one angle and again from another. I assume it is the stump of a young cottonwood.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/something-fishy-this-way-comes/Mon, 12 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/something-fishy-this-way-comes/Lately I have been thinking about fish. Maybe you should too. We pay too little attention, I think, to what goes on in the deep blue sea and even in the aquarium and the fish pond. On the other hand, what goes on may be little more exciting than watching algae grow. A case in the last point is the fish that the Sheas have: a dozen or more goldfish in the fish pond in the back yard, and our bala shark in the living room aquarium tank.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/sic-transit/Wed, 31 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/sic-transit/A friend died last week. But because there are so many ways to leave this life, let me be more specific. Hector Torres, my friend and colleague in the UNM English Department, was murdered. This happened because his girlfriend, Stephania Gray, had an ex-boyfriend who shot them both dead. I don’t feel constrained by the legal nicety of referring to him as the “alleged” killer, because he turned himself in the next day.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/what-mac-brazel-found-or-what-would-we-do-without-weather-balloons/Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/what-mac-brazel-found-or-what-would-we-do-without-weather-balloons/The Longsuffering Diana and I spent last weekend staying with friends in Roswell, New Mexico. We breezed through Roswell many years ago, but this time we discovered a little city with a lot to offer. Roswell is home to the venerable New Mexico Military Institute and to the Roswell Industrial Air Center. It boasts the Roswell Museum and Art Centre, and the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art. (Don Anderson, a capable artist in his own right, and his brother Robert founded the Atlantic Richfield Oil Company.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/teachers-testament-ii/Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/teachers-testament-ii/One of the best things to happen to my teaching has been my wonking. I said last week that a writing teacher should be a writing practitioner. I don’t delude myself that my weekly wonks are high art, but I like to think they show care and craft, things that I can pass on to my students. It has given me a valuable lesson in humility, too. Try as I may, a couple of typos inevitably slip through (“Matt, can you PLEASE change ‘chose’ to ‘choose’ in the second paragraph?https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/a-teachers-testament/Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/a-teachers-testament/I first stood on the other side of the lectern, the teacher’s side, close to a half-century ago. You will agree, I hope, that that constitutes a long ride—Lord knows how much chalk I have gone through in almost five decades—and it ain’t over yet. So, with your indulgence, perhaps the time has come for old Shea to wax profound and expansive, at least for one wonk. In all that time, what have I learned?https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/names/Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/names/A couple of weeks ago Leslie Linthicum, one of my favorite Albuquerque Journal writers, did a touching piece about Spanish first names—“given” names, Baptismal names— in northern New Mexico. You are probably thinking Carlos or Juan or Miguel, but you would be wrong. No, these are names that I had no idea existed until I settled in New Mexico: Eustaquio, Dionicia, Epifanio, Procopio, Estanislao, Tranquilino, and a host of others. Why especially in the mountains of northern New Mexico?https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/makeshift/Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/makeshift/Interesting word, “shift.” Or perhaps I should say a word with interesting variations and connotations. “Shift for yourself” connotes a hardy resourcefulness. On the other hand, “shiftless” connotes laziness. The entry takes up over three column inches in my dictionary. “Makeshift” suggests crudeness but also ingenuity. Day shift. Graveyard shift. Shifts and stratagems. And certainly to describe someone as shifty is not a compliment. (Shift as camisole can’t possibly have the same etymology [can it?https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/shifting-for-yourself/Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/shifting-for-yourself/I’m driving through my neighborhood the other day and come upon an old Honda hatchback with these cautionary words soaped on the back window: Learning 5-speed Keep Distance Well, that forthright admission tickled me all the way home, where I raced to my computer and emailed Dan and his sister, passing along my find and adding, “Ah, the memories came flooding back to old Pops.” And indeed they did. I made it a point that our progeny learn to drive a stick shift, a transmission by which you have to use a clutch to shift gears.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/and-another-thing/Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/and-another-thing/So, as I predicted in “Juggernaut,” along comes, electronically, my invitation to this summer’s high school essay reading, my ticket to beautiful Louisville, Kentucky. I am very happy about this. Almost happy enough to still the terrors that strike at my vitals when I realize that this means another forced march through Cyberland. Stay tuned. With luck there will be no “electronic signature” to contend with. Have you noticed, by the way, that to get your package redelivered or your stove fixed by a national outfit, you don’t call their local people anymore?https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/juggernaut/Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/juggernaut/Yet again I have been almost brought low by technology. I say “almost” because I haven’t given up yet, though it may be a near thing. A certain outfit that I sometimes work for has sent me an on-line form to fill out for them. It wasn’t always this way. These people and I used to communicate by snail mail. I would get hard copies in the mail and I would fill them out and send them back.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/face-the-music/Wed, 23 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/face-the-music/I wasn’t even sure I wanted to write this wonk (the first line on my note pad reads, “Is Techno Guy worth it?”). But this week the UNM Chorus, the Dulce Sueno Chorus, and the UNM Orchestra, under guest conductor Stephano Miceli, performed Brahms’ German Requiem, one of the masterworks of the Western world, and the contrast was just too stark to ignore. At the risk of compromising my modesty—faithful readers know that I have sung in the UNM Chorus for years—I will tell you that the performance was truly professional-grade, a stunning and transcendent experience for all.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/whales/Sun, 06 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/whales/Ever notice that some animals seem to have real trouble following the script? Take your penguin, for example. As a bird he is a disgrace (I’m sorry, but it’s time somebody said so and if it has to be me, well there you are then). Your penguin could pass muster as a portly butler in a whodunit, but where he really shines—if you have ever seen him gracefully cavorting under water—is as a fish.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/security-fable/Sun, 29 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/security-fable/If you ponder Krutch’s security axiom—security lies not in what one has but in what one can do without—long enough, you inevitably remember the story of the ant and the grasshopper, one of Aesop’s most famous fables. The details vary a bit in each telling but basically we have a happy-go-lucky grasshopper (in the original, a cicada) and a no-nonsense ant. The ant has spent the summer and fall finding bits of grain and grubs and hauling them laboriously back to his larder in the ant colony.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/security/Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/security/Way early in my teaching career, I used a book by Joseph Wood Krutch entitled The Desert Year. Krutch (1893-1970) was a drama critic, an English professor, a naturalist, a graceful writer, and, I have always thought, a wise man. The Desert Year is a collection of essays inspired by his observing and contemplating a year of life in the Sonoran Desert. Think Thoreau in Arizona. One line in that book struck me so forcefully that I wrote it down and I still have it: “Security depends not so much upon how much you have, as upon how much you can do without.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/security-a-la-carte/Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/security-a-la-carte/Last week I said that Joseph Wood Krutch’s axiom—which I usually phrase as “security lies not in what one has but in what one can do without”—may have more to do with morality than with materiality. I think it does, but I would like to put that on hold for a bit. And I have been telling my faithful correspondents, Joe and Sally, that I think that axiom is either very profound or just very commonsensical, and that its phrasing may be more compelling and beguiling than the idea behind it.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/digital-watch/Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/digital-watch/Last week, after my watch fell into the boiling spaghetti water (don’t ask), I guessed that I would need a new one soon. Although it did dry out enough to begin working again, it began to get very creative in its time-telling. When the sun had just come up but my watch told me it was 1:47, I went shopping as soon as I could. And a surprise was waiting for me.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/nightmare/Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/nightmare/Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious, said Freud famously, and he set us off on that road in the scientific quest for dream understanding. Dream analysis can be a very helpful tool to serious psychoanalysts. Downscale, we have the dream interpreters in the daily papers. Often those interpretations confirms our hopes and wishes—our dreams—for love or money. Not much different from the astrology columns, really. But first I must make peace with the Long-Suffering Diana.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/dream-on/Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/dream-on/Last week, when I was visiting son Dan in San Diego, I had my usual anxiety dream and was telling him about it, somewhat bemused because here I was in La-La-Land, having a wonderful vacation with not an obvious care in the world. Anyway, I refer to “my anxiety dream” in the singular because it really has been the same dream with just minor variations for the past fifty years. Always the setting is some school and I am probably an undergraduate.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/lemonade/Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/lemonade/(Another vintage essay, friends [1990?], but such car rants are, I hope, timeless.) Our family car is a 1988 Chevy Astrovan. I drive it as seldom as possible, not because it is a truly terrible machine but because certain defects that it does have can ruin my day if I start to dwell on them. The coachwork, in particular, is a disgrace, the ultimate in cheap plastic and bad fasteners. Handles snap off and panels come loose.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/talknet/Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/talknet/(This is an oldie, folks, but I hope it is still a goodie.) On a local radio station these nights, a program called Talknet encourages troubled folks nationwide to call in for advice on legal and financial matters. It’s a good show: the pace is brisk; the host is knowledgeable and personable. What is especially heartening, though, is the inference one might draw from these proceedings, which is that life is for the tough-minded, those who can weigh their options and ACT.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/writing-right/Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/writing-right/There is a wonderful scene in Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run where the hopelessly inept Virgil Starkwell tries to rob a bank. He sidles up to the teller’s window and slides a note across. The note reads, “Give me all the money. I’ve got a gun.” Or so he thinks it reads. The teller studies the note, looks at him quizzically, and says, “You’ve got a gum?” “No,” Virgil hisses, “I’ve got a gun…a gun!https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/cursive-writing/Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/cursive-writing/I suppose because I am a teacher, a friend sent me an article last week which noted the decline of cursive writing practice in our schools (“Penmanship Losing to Computers”). Had I noticed a change over the years? My first response was that I hardly ever see my students’ handwriting, cursive or otherwise: all the work that I grade, they do on computers (and if someone used a “cursive” font, I’m afraid the irony would be wasted on me: don’t get cute, I’d say).https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/shea-inc/Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/shea-inc/Yes, “Shea, Inc.” as in “incorporated,” even as you are incorporated, which is to say that our souls or spirits or anima are the guests of our bodies, our corpora, those hard-working if sometime treacherous flesh and blood and bone contrivances that bear us through life until they final give up, as we say, the ghost. For good or ill we are all incarnate. We spend our lives peeking out of the eyeholes of this body that shelters us and pulls in signals from the world.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/trade-in/Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/trade-in/I was going to call this wonk “Cash for Clunkers,” a salute to the very popular government program just concluded. But I thought I deserved better. I am not, after all, a Buick (rumors that I might be an Edsel are just that and no more). Because we all sometimes fantasize about trading up to a younger, fitter self—“He’s got the body of a twenty-year-old [runs the quip]…and, boy, is that kid ticked off!https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/tropes/Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/tropes/I teach a course here at UNM in classical rhetorical tropes, have for years. But the first question I have to engage for my students—who are, after all, paying good money—is “What is a trope?” And it’s not just my students. Acquaintances both close and casual are curious about the term. And now word has reached me that my in-laws have asked their daughter exactly what it is that Jerome teaches.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/birth-order/Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/birth-order/The Sheas are having a kitchen renovation done. The new countertop, sink, and dishwasher are eagerly anticipated. But all the countertop people do is install the countertop and the new sink. So the Long Suffering Diana and your faithful Wonker are having a…uh…spirited discussion about who is going to hook up the dishwasher and re-install the drain pipes under the sink. She wants me to do it, to save money and perhaps to bolster my self-esteem (that latter is a guess).https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/a-decade-in-daytona/Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/a-decade-in-daytona/Like nomads—a very large contingent of nomads—the Advanced Placement essay graders strike their tents every few years and move on. We move on because we have outgrown the accommodations or because the Educational Testing Service was able to strike a better deal somewhere else or out of a perverse need for discipline (see below). For whatever reason, this was our last sojourn in Daytona Beach, Florida. With something between bemusement and amazement, most of us finally realized that we would miss the place.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/tilbury-town/Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/tilbury-town/Another wonk about a poet. But unlike William Topaz McGonagall or Julia Ann Moore, I am talking about a very good poet, Edwin Arlington Robinson, who seems to have dropped off the radar, and that’s a pity. The man won the Pulitzer Prize three times. His long poem, Tristram (part of his trilogy on the Arthurian cycle), was a best seller in 1927. But by mid-century all that kept his reputation bumping along were two or three poems—“Richard Cory,” “Mr.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/stuff-and-such/Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/stuff-and-such/Yes, a grab bag in which will squirm Sonia Sotomayor, some medieval theologians, PBS folks, and anything else that strikes my fancy. My local public television station is having yet another pledge drive. I hate those things with a hatred that should be reserved for serial killers. And I don’t really know why. Clearly, the “pledge breaks,” groaning on interminably, would tax the patience of a saint (gee, what could be more exciting than watching a phone bank while some fidgety guy assaults us with banalities).https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/j-laurence-shea-1907-1966/Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/j-laurence-shea-1907-1966/On this Father’s Day I am taking the liberty of reprinting an essay that I wrote for Century magazine more than 20 years ago. This is for you, Pop, one more time. It’s three a.m. and I’m up for the second time. Now, at least, I have figured out why. Yesterday my six-year-old son, anticipating donuts, reminded his mother that Father’s Day was getting closer. My father, long dead, keeps me awake.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/reigning-cats-and-dogs/Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/reigning-cats-and-dogs/Chuppie gave us a scare this week. He disappeared for a couple of days and reappeared much the worse for wear. More on Chup in a bit, but that’s what got me thinking about our pets. And we’ve had a slew of them over the years. I will have to skip over all the guinea pigs, the tarantula (ugh), Dan’s horned toad, the parakeets (“What made you think I’d want parakeets, Dad?https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/zamani-revisited/Sat, 30 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/zamani-revisited/Well, I thought that Sasa and Zamani, this hobby horse I’ve been riding, was finally going to become Sasa. Then I heard from Joe, my old friend and trusty correspondent from Colorado. So he gets the credit (or the blame) for this one last look. Sasa is a concept we can warm to; Zamani, though, is troublesome. Last week I noted that James Loewen (Lies My Teacher Told Me) applies the Sasa and Zamani concepts to historical events, not just people: the Vietnam War is Sasa for many of us, while the War of 1812 is definitely Zamani.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/potholes-on-memory-lane/Mon, 11 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/potholes-on-memory-lane/James Loewen’s point about Sasa and Zamani actually has to do with events, not people. Like people, history begins “live,” exists for a time as Sasa, and eventually becomes Zamani. A simple rule of thumb: what you are still seeing on the six o’clock news is “live” history. The auto company bailouts are still happening. A couple of years from now, when Chrysler dealers are selling Fiats and when GM is limping along hawking Cadillacs, Buicks, and Chevrolets—when, in short, the bailouts are a thing of the past (a telling phrase)—then they will be Sasa, past events that millions of people will be alive to remember (and argue about).https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/the-grace-of-memory/Mon, 04 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/the-grace-of-memory/James Loewen wrought more than he knew when he picked up the idea of Sasa and Zamani from John Mbiti’s treatise.* For one thing, it caused a flurry on Google. Yes, there is a helpful Wikipedia entry for it, especially helpful because it directs you to Mbiti’s book, which, lo and behold, was available at the UNM library. Then an old friend emailed me the other morning to steer me to a wonderful recent novel, Kevin Brockmeier’s The Brief History of the Dead.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/sasa-and-zamani/Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/sasa-and-zamani/In his very commendable Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen gives new life to the Swahili terms “Sasa” (“Sasha,” for Loewen) and “Zamani.” We will get back to Loewen presently, but first let me try my best to explain the terms. I warn you that my best may not be good enough, because Sasa and Zamani represent highly sophisticated African notions of time, religion, and philosophy. The best source for these terms, and Loewen gives due credit, is John Mbiti’s African Religions and Philosophy, first published in 1970.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/traveling-with-rhoda/Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/traveling-with-rhoda/Recently, just in time for our trip to Taos and then our trip to El Paso, Diana bought a GPS (Global Positioning System), an electronic device for getting you from point A to point B with the least fuss, the best mileage, or something. Satellites are involved, that much I know, causing road maps to pop up on a little screen that you suction-cup to your windshield, a screen that also displays your speed and computes your time of arrival.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/the-voice-of-the-turtle/Sat, 11 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/the-voice-of-the-turtle/Spring and Easter have come ‘round again, and good on that. Easter, of course, is the culmination of the Christian calendar, its most important feast, much more important than Christmas. Christmas gets the ball inexorably rolling but it is with Easter, with Christ’s resurrection from the dead, that a Christian can crow, “See, we TOLD you he was the Son of God!” What is also appropriate about Easter, which really did occur in the spring as far as we know, is that Christ’s resurrection becomes the ultimate symbol of renewal, of death and rebirth, of new life.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/sailing-the-mesa/Sun, 05 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/sailing-the-mesa/Last week, Diana and I and our daughter and her family spent two nights up in Taos, New Mexico, in an “earthship.” I knew immediately that I had to wonk the experience. “What is an earthship?” you ask. It is a habitat that aims to be entirely “off the grid.” This means a house heated by the sun and cooled by the earth. A house which collects all the water you need from rain and snowmelt.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/la-llorona/Sun, 29 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/la-llorona/Last week I mentioned La Llorona, the Weeping Woman or Wailing Woman. You cannot have lived in New Mexico very long without hearing the tale. In fact, La Llorona is known throughout Central and South America and the American Southwest. There are many variations, but the most common around these parts features a young woman named Maria. She is poor and from the wrong side of the tracks. She may be exceedingly beautiful or she may not be, but she is always ambitious: she is going to better herself.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/water-in-the-ditch/Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/water-in-the-ditch/Spring has come to my town; she is coy for the moment but will soon be sashaying. The flowering trees are busy in white and pink. The elms are bristling with catkins. The crocuses are up. There is even furtive budding on my big mulberry and of course the globe willows are leafed out already. I greet even the dandelions with cheer. By late morning these days it is top down weather and the Little Red Beast and I are making the most of it.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/charmed-life/Sun, 15 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/charmed-life/A friend writes, “Ever since some awful hard times early on, Jerry, you really have been a very lucky fellow, as you know.” She is quite right. I will spare you those hard times, if only so that I don’t sound like a whiner. But ever since then I have indeed been wonderfully lucky: in my marriage, in my children, in my career, in my health, and in other ways that haven’t occurred to me yet.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/bizarre-bazaar/Sun, 08 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/bizarre-bazaar/In the pages of tabloids you can find everything to feed your head, albeit a crude diet. The celebrity gossip, of course, the low-down on “Brangelina,” and “TomKat,” how Brad’s poor heartbroken ex, Jennifer, is holding up (or not), whether Oprah and Stedman really have a future, and so forth. And of course the reader is always on a first-name basis with these celebs. The fantasy is that if the stars (pardon the pun) were aligned just right, Oprah would love to hang out with you and let her hair down.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/tabloids/Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/tabloids/So there I was in the checkout the other day and a cover story and headline assailed my eye. The picture was of our new First Couple (dancing, I think). The President’s back is to us and the First Lady is looking over his shoulder with an ominous scowl. The headline? “MICHELLE TO OPRAH: BACK OFF! HE’S MINE!’” Welcome to the world of the checkout line tabloids, familiar to us all.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/my-heart-has-followed/Sun, 08 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/my-heart-has-followed/Don Marquis was born in a small Illinois town in 1878 and died in New York City in 1937. He packed a lot of life into that span. It’s a shame that he is all but forgotten today. He was basically a newspaper columnist, and his forte was humor. But as if publishing a column six days a week wasn’t punishing enough, he also churned out novels, short stories, essays, poetry, and plays both humorous and serious—more than thirty volumes in all.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/don-marquis/Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/don-marquis/First of all, it’s “MARkwiss (Scots), not MarKEE (French). And he wrote much more than Archie and Mehitabel. Nevertheless, it is for Archie and Mehitabel that he is known, if known at all, and one could do far worse. (In fact, the temptation to just turn the rest of this wonk over to Archie is almost irresistible.) Marquis created Archie (the cockroach) and Mehitabel (the alley cat) in 1916 so that he could get column material in some other guise, so that he would have a voice not his own for a while.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/son-of-a-ditch/Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/son-of-a-ditch/That’s “Ditch,” not—well, you know—despite any personal failings we might have. But when we scream, ”SON OF A DITCH!” when racing across a finish line, we are sometimes misheard. This wonk is long overdue. Harvey has been nagging me about it since forever. Ok, who is Harvey and who or what are the Sons of Ditches? Harvey Buchalter and I are the co-founders of this esteemed running club, so-called. Why Sons of Ditches?https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/your-new-iphone-and-you-and-the-existential-wasteland-of-modern-life-official-troubleshooting/Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/your-new-iphone-and-you-and-the-existential-wasteland-of-modern-life-official-troubleshooting/PROBLEM: My iPhone will not will not turn on; the screen is dark and there is no sound. POSSIBLE CAUSES: [1] Your iPhone’s battery is completely discharged. [2] Your iPhone is stuck in Locked Mode. [3] You have somehow glimpsed through the thin construct of modern social existence to the core of Mankind’s indifferent and inconsequential nature and so therefore can no longer discern between moral and immoral, pain and pleasure, or even on and off.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/the-sweet-singer-of-michigan/Sat, 10 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/the-sweet-singer-of-michigan/Take heart, Gentle Readers! I have found William Topaz McGonagall’s soulmate! (Surely you remember McGonagall, “World’s Worst Poet”?) I sing of Julia Ann Moore, aka “The Sweet Singer of Michigan, “ and I take special pride in that she was from our own American heartland. A lifelong Michigander, she was born in 1847 and died in 1920. She married Frederick Moore, a farmer, in 1865. Eventually they became decently prosperous, but their lives were typical of the time and place.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/the-pig-story/Sun, 04 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/the-pig-story/Welcome to 2009, friends. Looks like things will probably get worse before they get better, so let’s start the year off with my all-time favorite joke. (I always thought of it as a “shaggy dog story” [“shaggy pig story”?] but my research into that wonderful genre suggests that a purist might give me an argument. Whatever. We start with very early spring in Milwaukee and a young man we’ll call “Bob.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/adios-2008/Mon, 29 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/adios-2008/Well, it’s hard to say if 2008 is leaving us like a grand symphonic coda or like dishwater circling a drain. A little of both, I guess. Herewith, a look at some highlights large and small. The daddy of all big news had to be the November election. After the longest primary and then presidential campaign in our history, we elected Barack Obama as our first black president. Thousands were electrified by his acceptance speech in Chicago’s Grant Park.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/sitka/Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/sitka/Grab your toothbrush—we’re hitting the road again. Unlike Belize, you won’t need your swim trunks, because this time we are going “North to Alaska.” Specifically, we are going to Sitka, one of my favorite places in all the world. How does Shea know about Sitka? Because our son-in-law went to school there, at Sheldon Jackson College (now defunct). He stayed on, and he and our daughter started their married life there, on Monastery Street.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/belize/Sun, 14 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/belize/I’ve got a real jones for Belize. Of course, there are a lot of places I would like to visit, or revisit, someday. Australia has always been near the top of the list. Ever since our first visit, in 2007 (see the “A Grouch Abroad” series of wonks), I have had a soft spot for Florence—and Fiesole and whatever else of Tuscany we can manage. I would love to go back to Sitka, Alaska, and hike up Mt.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/yma-sumac/Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/yma-sumac/Yma Sumac died a few weeks ago in Los Angeles at the age of 86, a truly unique voice stilled at last. She was born Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chavarri del Castillo in a remote village in Peru. Her father was part Spanish and her mother a full-blooded Incan (in fact, the Peruvian government supported her claim to be descended from the last Incan emperor, Atahualpa). “Yma Sumac” (early on, “Ymma Sumack” or “Ima Sumack”) is a variation on her mother’s name, to which she gave various interpretations.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/hardware-high-revisited/Sun, 07 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/hardware-high-revisited/I realized a couple of years ago—and with no small bemusement—that the deep satisfaction that I once felt in a hardware store I now feel equally in an office supply store. At first blush this seems a comedown. The macho builder has been downgraded into the scholar, the teacher, the writer, the man who deals not with hammers and saws and socket wrenches but with legal pads and ring binders, paper clips and post-it notes.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/jump-on-the-bus-gus/Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/jump-on-the-bus-gus/I have taken to riding the bus to UNM these days. It’s more convenient than I would have thought, I don’t have to worry about disposing of the Little Red Beast when I get there (I also declined to renew my campus parking permit), and to top it off, it is free for UNM faculty. And this is one of those fancy articulated buses, so you really feel like you’ve arrived even before you arrive.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/saki/Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/saki/I have rediscovered Saki. That overstates the case a bit, because the only stories of his that I knew were the often anthologized ones, like “The Open Window.” (And by the way, he didn’t write “The Monkey’s Paw; that was W. W. Jacobs.). So I have been wallowing in Saki the last few days and thought I would share him with you. And since I find Saki, his pen name, to be an irritating affectation, from here on out he will he H(ector) H(ugh) Munro, the name he was born with.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/mummers/Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/mummers/As I watched los matachines make their stately way down Camino del Pueblo in Bernalillo twenty some years ago, it was, as Yogi Berra would say, “déjà vu all over again.” But it did not take me long to make the connection: the Mummers, back in Philadelphia! I was raised just north of the City of Brotherly Love, where the New Years Day Mummers Parade is a big deal—a very big deal.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/matachines/Sun, 02 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/matachines/I wonder how many of my readers outside the American Southwest have any idea what “los Matachines” (ma-ta-CHEE-nez) refers to. It’s a strange name for a strange dance drama or religious ritual or mummery or costume play or…something. No one really knows where or when the matachines tradition started, no one knows for certain what the actors represent or what the narrative is. No one can even say with complete authority where the word itself comes from.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/halloween-wonk/Sun, 26 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/halloween-wonk/If you tramp the gloomy and spectral byways of Greek lore, sooner or later you will run across the tale of Erysichthon, a tale which goes back to a time when Time itself was but a swaddled suckling. Come back with me. Erysichthon was a bad, bad, man, brutal and arrogant. He cared for no man (or woman or child). Neither, in fact, did he care for the gods. Utterly impious, he had a penchant for gratuitous evil.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/lonely-street-and-other-observations/Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/lonely-street-and-other-observations/For an Obamanista, my street–my neighborhood for that matter–is enemy territory. McCain signs all over the place. Some front lawns fairly bristle with Republican attitude: “McCain/Palin,” “Darren White for Congress,” “Steve Pearce for Senate,” “Another Family for McCain!” It’s their right, of course, but my “Obama/Biden” sign stands there like the last legionnaire, daunted but not, I hope, doomed. No one has ripped it up or defaced it. I’ll give my neighbors that.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/yellow/Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/yellow/What started me on this color business (see “Colors”) was the generally bad reputation that yellow struggles under. Never mind that yellow can be associated with gold and sunshine and buttercups and ribbons ‘round the old oak tree. Never mind that it has become a very popular color for sporty cars lately—my late, lamented Metro convertible was a brilliant yellow. On balance, yellow has suffered a bad rep, or rap, through the centuries.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/colors/Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/colors/so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens (Wm. Carlos Williams) I am gazing out of my office window and the world I see is a world of color and it is lovely for that. Zimmerman Library is a restful adobe tan*. The sycamores vary in their foliage, many drab and jaundiced (they never seemed to do well around Smith Plaza), but the big, dark ponderosa pines set everything off and yet pull it together, and the patch of lawn, even in this desert, is Erin-green.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/the-great-irony-kerfuffle/Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/the-great-irony-kerfuffle/Well, Shea is late again. I hated to interrupt the coinage sequels, and Macinstruct has been in the summer doldrums, Matt and I indulging ourselves in travel and just kicking back, relishing the welcome rain and dodging the heat. But now, like the Terminator, we’re baaack! The presidential campaign slogs on even though neither candidate has been officially nominated yet. One yearns to comment on the latest flip-flop flaps, or the gaffes of supporters, like that doozy by Phil Gramm.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/pennies-and-quarters-and-dollars-oh-my/Tue, 05 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/pennies-and-quarters-and-dollars-oh-my/Long live the penny! And live long it probably will, despite Jim Kolbe’s efforts (see “A Nickel for Your Thoughts” and “A Penny Saved or a Penny Spurned?”). The U.S. Mint says that there are no plans to discontinue it. As to what it costs to make a penny—I first said 1.4 cents and then 1.7 cents—the actual cost seems only slightly less volatile than the commodities market (which may be no surprise).https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/a-penny-saved-or-a-penny-spurned/Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/a-penny-saved-or-a-penny-spurned/Last week I outlined Question 1 on the AP exam: should we get rid of the penny?* Representative Jim Kolbe of Arizona, sponsor of the Legal Tender Modernization Act, thinks we should. He would have the nickel do the penny’s job by simply rounding sums up or down in cash transactions. It should also be noted that the LTMA would not abolish the penny. It would still be legal tender, would still be minted.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/a-nickel-for-your-thoughts/Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/a-nickel-for-your-thoughts/Empty your pocket or purse. How much change do you have? I have only 41 cents at the moment: three dimes, a nickel, and six pennies. (I had a bunch of quarters, but I washed the Little Red Beast on the way in this morning.) I do have a point, which I’ll get to in a moment. The Advanced Placement Essay Reading, which I wrote about last year (“Summer Camp” and two subsequent wonks), came round again.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/dark-and-stormy-night/Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/dark-and-stormy-night/These things always start innocently enough. I was browsing in a new reference book and came across the entry for the prolific Victorian writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The only thing noted besides his name and dates was the fact that Bulwer-Lytton is notorious for having written the worst opening line in English letters: “It was a dark and stormy night.” That’s when it hit me (yet again): I have known for years that this line is supposed to be the benchmark for atrocious writing, and yet I never really understood why.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/chagrin-and-politics/Sun, 08 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/chagrin-and-politics/One could argue that chagrin and politics go together like salt and pepper. More on that later, perhaps. But this chagrin—mine—arises from the fact that a week after I wrote the “Rainy Day” wonk, there came another wonderful rainy day: Sandias socked in, sky a dripping dome, and so forth. This after I had sworn to you that Albuquerque was only slightly more moist than the Atacama Desert in Chile. What can I say?https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/rainy-day/Sun, 01 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/rainy-day/Sometimes a wonk is right there in front of you, hiding in plain sight. I realized this as I was casting about for a proper wonk subject yesterday, driving up Second Street with my windshield wipers on “intermittent.” It was raining! That is why I was feeling so deeply satisfied! It was a genuine rainy day in Albuquerque! Rain in Albuquerque—and I mean a whole rainy day, not the brief evening showers that we get in July, our “monsoon season”—is a big, big, deal.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/descansos/Sun, 18 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/descansos/Descanso, in case the Spanish term is new to you, means “resting place.” In practical application, it refers to the embellished roadside crosses—shrines, in effect—erected where people have been killed in traffic accidents. One is tempted to say—and some would say it with angry conviction—that New Mexico is littered with descansos. Far from considering them litter, I think this practice of erecting descansos and of the state’s winking at their existence—other states forbid them and aggressively tear them down—says good things about us Nuevo Mexicanos.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/danny-boy/Sun, 11 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/danny-boy/Perhaps the best part of my rediscovery of Paul Robeson was listening to his rendition of “Danny Boy.” “I guess it’s not just for tenors anymore,” I mused. We all feel, I think, that Irish tenors have a lock on that perennial favorite. Not so. Basses have sung it. Groups have sung it. Women have sung it—in fact, the man responsible for “Danny Boy” assumed that the singer would be a woman; he even substituted “Eily Dear,” for “Danny Boy,” to accommodate male singers.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/paul-robeson/Sun, 04 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/paul-robeson/Last month I promised you a wonk on Paul Robeson, one of the most remarkable figures of the 20th century. Only one (older) student in my UNM class knew who Paul Robeson was. If that survey is at all representative, I would like to try to remedy it in some small way. Robeson, the whole man, needs to be remembered, and as much for our sake as for his. That would take a book, of course.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/apologetic-mac/Sun, 27 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/apologetic-mac/MY SOON-TO-BE-EX-COMPUTER SENSES THAT I’VE BEEN SHOPPING AROUND FOR A NEW LAPTOP To: Dan Shea From: Serious Mac Date: 02/14/08 Subject: Why Dan? Dan, This is your trusty desktop computer. You know, the big fat white iMac G4 on your desk (whom you’ve neglected to properly name in the last three years, but that’s another story altogether)? I’ve hacked into your Gmail account (well, is it really hacking when I do it?https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/drowning-in-the-danube/Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/drowning-in-the-danube/So not long before E. D. Hirsch got his shorts in a bunch over the fact that the latest generation did not know the facts that they should know and therefore were in danger of becoming culturally illiterate, “Trivial Pursuit” hit the market and became an instant and enduring success. Is this a contradiction? I suppose it depends on the questions (even if there is a gray area). Simply put, some facts matter and some do not, or, some are culturally important and some are not.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/danube-revisited/Sun, 13 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/danube-revisited/Last week I undertook a half-hearted defense of E. D. Hirsch’s cultural literacy idea. In truth, though, it does have the odor of the flaky about it. For one thing, it points up how uncomfortable we are with the whole idea of so-called facts: what I know is indispensable knowledge; what you know (and I happen not to) is trivia, from which the word “trivial” derives. And we all still feel the sting of being knocked out of the spelling bee, of our friend’s supercilious smirk when we assumed that Boxing Day had something to do with fisticuffs, and, yes, of not knowing that the Danube flowed through Europe.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/on-not-knowing-where-the-danube-is/Sun, 06 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/on-not-knowing-where-the-danube-is/So last week I expressed dismay, to put it mildly, over the young woman on the quiz show who did not know where the Danube River was located. I promised—or maybe “threatened” is more apt—a follow-up wonk. This did not sit well with the Longsuffering Diana, who saw trouble ahead: her husband becoming especially fatuous and alienating many of his readers into the bargain. She is probably right as usual, but that has never stopped me before.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/potpourri/Sun, 30 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/potpourri/Yes, a grab bag, and I reserve the right to enlarge on some of these ideas and crochets in future wonks. So many things seem to be coming in, most of them absurd. For example, the other night I was channel surfing and stopped momentarily at a cheesy quiz show called “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?” Well, this contestant was not. She could not name the continent—the continent!—that the Danube river runs through.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/staying-put-ii/Sat, 22 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/staying-put-ii/This idea of mobility is easy to oversimplify and of course is also a matter of degree. There are people who, for whatever reasons, move every couple of years and often over great distances; there are others who are born, live, and die in the same house in the same town. Some are proverbial rolling stones while some are as rooted as oak trees. But most of us fall somewhere in between.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/staying-put/Sun, 16 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/staying-put/Old joke: “Lived here all your life, old timer?” “Not yet.” You can blame this wonk on Sally. She has lived all over the place during the last 45 years, both in this country and abroad. Shea, on the other hand, has been hunkered down in Albuquerque since 1969. So in her email to me a couple of weeks ago, she wondered out loud how it might feel to have put down roots as I did.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/sally/Sun, 09 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/sally/Readers of this cyber-space (you know who you are) will recall “Sally,” who showed up in a couple of recent wonks. Sally was that fellow grad student at Colorado State who went to Mexico with me over Christmas break in 1964 (“Ford Flathead II”). In “Equus Caballus,” Sally’s derisive laughter assaulted my equestrian skills, or lack thereof. After the Mexico trip, I thought I was in love with Sally and suffered the sorrows of young Werther well into the springtime.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/more-pun-ishment/Sun, 02 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/more-pun-ishment/Two questions linger from last week’s discussion of puns: namely, why puns are so often scorned as “the lowest form of humour” (whoever did say that, consensus seems to be that he was a Brit), and how puns are revelatory of deeper rhetorical mysteries. Well, let me and a couple of friends wrestle with those questions. I have a hunch, by the way, that the answers are connected. It is tempting, first of all, to see puns as going in and out of fashion through the ages and fashioning (there’s another polyptoton/ploce, friends) a theory out of that.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/a-pun-my-word/Sat, 23 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/a-pun-my-word/Recently a friend sent me something that has been making the rounds on the Internet for years. It purports to be exchanges between pilots who note problems with their airplanes and the maintenance people who respond, later, below the pilot’s notation. In one case the pilot is supposed to have written “#3 engine missing,” and the mechanic has written below it: “#3 engine found on right wing after brief search.”https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/equus-caballus/Sat, 16 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/equus-caballus/Who does not love horses? Magnificent animals, are they not? Often I come upon horsemen (and -women—usually women, in fact) when I am running in the Rio Grande bosque. We greet each other cordially and I step aside so they can pass. I usually find something nice to say, along the lines of “Handsome steed you have there, my friend.” But that’s about as far as it goes. If the truth be known, and this wonk will be a big bag of it, there is no love lost between Shea and equus caballus.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/ford-flathead-ii/Sat, 09 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/ford-flathead-ii/I don’t remember much about that first semester at Colorado State, and maybe that’s for the best. It was a mixed bag, surely. I was on my own for the first time and pushing a barrow-load of insecurities. Too much partying, too much floundering and dithering. To be teaching for the first time was both a heady and a terrifying experience.* But somehow I got through it, and I made friends that I still have these long years later.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/dictionary-the-ultimate-educational-application/Thu, 07 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/dictionary-the-ultimate-educational-application/As part of Farmington Municipal Schools’ Learning Initiative, we are focusing on providing quick and easy ways to take advantage of some great tools built into Apple’s operating system. One of these tools can help you with language (definitions, pronunciations, synonyms, and antonyms) and is an indispensable tool in any classroom. I’m referring to the built-in Dictionary application, of course. But it’s not just the application you launch and use directly that is so powerful in OS X.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/create-sitemaps-with-siteorbiter/Wed, 06 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/create-sitemaps-with-siteorbiter/Websites are getting larger and larger, and keeping track of them as they evolve can be a hassle. If you’re a web developer, you’ll want to create what’s called a site map, a special file that lists all of the pages of your website in an hierarchical order. This file can be submitted to search engines to help them index your website. But how the heck are you supposed to create one on your Mac?https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/ford-flathead-i/Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/ford-flathead-i/I graduated from college in June, 1964, and in late August of that year I lit out for the West to enter the Masters Program in English at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.* I did my lighting out in a 1950 Ford, a black two-door sedan with a stick shift (“three in the tree”) and the legendary flathead (or “L-head”) V8 engine. First, a word about that engine. The Ford flathead is arguably the most famous engine ever produced in this country.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/anniversary-wonk/Sat, 26 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/anniversary-wonk/“You’re all entitled to my opinion.” Says here that my maiden Weekend Wonk column was posted on the 20th of January, 2007. But I didn’t want to break into my three-part wonk on language abuse which concluded last week, so with this marking of the milestone I am, to vary the old phrase, a week late and a dollar short. Still, I do want to mark the milestone, look back a bit, pay some debts, and, well, celebrate.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-run-windows-on-your-mac-with-vmware-fusion/Tue, 22 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-run-windows-on-your-mac-with-vmware-fusion/It’s an exciting time to be a Mac user. Everyone knows that we get to use Mac OS X Leopard, the world’s most advanced operating system. And now, if you have an Intel-based Mac and an application called VMware Fusion, you also have the option of using the world’s second and third and fourth best operating systems! Yes, we’re talking about Microsoft Windows, the operating system that the rest of the world has the misfortune privilege of using.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/language-one-more-time/Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/language-one-more-time/Prescriptivists are often seen as obsessives with too much time on their hands. But we are all prescriptivists, rule enforcers, to an extent. These are not grand, all-out battles that we fight, however. “Skirmish” might be a better word. I will give you “on accident” with as much grace as I can muster but will fight to the death to preserve the downfall/pitfall/drawback distinction. I will join in the derisive laughter about split infinitives, but will get exceedingly shirty if you misuse the semicolon and the conjunctive adverb.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/on-accident/Sat, 12 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/on-accident/So the fruit of my loins protests that he broke the goldfish bowl “ON accident,” and I blanch, or pretend to. Does Dan’s new wording mean that something is going somewhere in a hand basket? I don’t think so, and that exposes our assumption that language change is always for the worse. Why is this so? Perhaps it’s part of the larger “good old days” phenomenon. People are naturally nostalgic. Everything was better “back in the day.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/simple-mac-troubleshooting/Mon, 07 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/simple-mac-troubleshooting/Macs have a reputation for being user-friendly and easy-to-use personal computers. And, generally speaking, they live up to that reputation. Most Macs perform flawlessly for years. However, every Mac occasionally misbehaves. You might know what we’re talking about. Sometimes programs on your Mac won’t launch, wireless hotspots won’t appear in the menu bar, or applications keep crashing. Things just act wacky. Macs have come a long way since they were capable of displaying the infamous “Sad Mac” image, but things can still go wrong on your new Mac.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/whose-language-is-it-anyway/Sat, 05 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/whose-language-is-it-anyway/A friend sends along an item from the Christian Science Monitor entitled “Reign in those vocal chords.” Uh oh. The English teacher in me feels at once very annoyed and very tired. And it is as bad as I expected. Turns out, the Oxford University Press, in regard to its dictionaries, has decided to accept as correct spellings which were once deemed incorrect in certain stock phrases. OUP will accept these solecisms “simply because a lot of people use them.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/cape-cod/Sat, 29 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/cape-cod/I married well. I don’t mean just the Longsuffering Diana, that pearl beyond price. I mean the whole Dinsmore clan that she brought to the marriage with her. A wonderful dowry they have proven to be, generous and witty and convivial. I have known them for more than thirty years now and, like a good vintage, they only improve with age. By any measure I lucked out big time. And so we find ourselves here on Cape Cod—Falmouth, to be precise— this Christmas season and I find myself in my father-in-law’s study, working on this last wonk of the year.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/flannel-sheets/Mon, 24 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/flannel-sheets/Backward, turn backward, O time, in your flight, Make me a child again just for tonight Elizabeth Akers Allen The World’s Greatest Granddaughters came to town this weekend. Their coming is always a glorious upheaval along the lines of a violent meteorological event. The older will jab the doorbell in staccato fashion, an eldritch grin on her face. Then their mother, our daughter, will give them the go-ahead. This breaching of the outer defenses signals the mad dash and ululating cries—POPPYPOPPYPOPPYNANANANAPOPPYNANAPOPPYNANA!https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/10-things-to-love-about-mac-os-x-leopard/Mon, 17 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/10-things-to-love-about-mac-os-x-leopard/It’s been a couple months since Apple released its new operating system Mac OS X Leopard, and that’s more than enough time to give it a nice once over. (See our introduction to Leopard and some of our favorite Leopard features.) The first thing you’ll notice is the new look. Not just the new dock or the new login screen, but also the folders and the crisper, sleeker look of icons and folders.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/celebs-sounding-off-sort-of/Sat, 15 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/celebs-sounding-off-sort-of/A few weeks ago, a friend forwarded to me, with tacit endorsement, an essay by Jay Leno that a friend had found on the Internet. I found the jingoistic ideas expressed in it repugnant, but that’s not the point (after all, I disagree with most of what is floating around on the Internet). No, the point is that Jay Leno—with the exception of one line of his that got lifted from an old Tonight Show monologue—had nothing at all to do with it.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/block-internet-ads-with-safari-adblock/Thu, 13 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/block-internet-ads-with-safari-adblock/It seems we here at Macinstruct discuss blocking pesky Internet ads at least every couple months. There’s a good reason for our ad-blocking articles: Advertising is more distracting and pervasive than ever before. Flashing banners and animated graphics can prevent you from focusing on what’s really important – the content. Fortunately, there are ways to block the nasties. Several months ago, we talked about how to use Privoxy to block ads.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/phantasmagoria-after-the-sandia-report/Sun, 09 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/phantasmagoria-after-the-sandia-report/Back around 1989, Gentle Readers, when public education was the topic du jour, a research team under the auspices of the Sandia Corporation, here in Albuquerque, was charged with taking an honest look at our public schools in order to see if they were really as bad as everyone seemed to think. A preliminary report was issued (leaked?) in early 1991 and it said, to some people’s relief and to others’ outrage, that the public school system was doing a pretty darned good job, all things considered.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/making-the-most-of-time-machine/Thu, 06 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/making-the-most-of-time-machine/In an earlier article, I gave an overview of Apple’s Time Machine backup solution. Today we’re going to go a bit deeper. This won’t be a tutorial on how to use Time Machine, because the interface is pretty simple. Instead, we’ll show you some of the more advanced options. We’ll also see why the format of your drive makes a difference and even take a trip through the steps needed for network backup.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/whipping-boy/Sat, 01 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/whipping-boy/I have taught in college for more than 40 years, and the Longsuffering Diana has taught in our public elementary schools for more than 20 years. That’s more than 60 years in the classroom, more than 60 years of frustration and, sometimes, elation. So when I say that we know something about education, I hope you will agree that we have real “street cred.” We can talk the talk because we have walked the walk.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-your-macs-icons/Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-your-macs-icons/We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: One of the best things about Macs are the icons. There are dozens of icons that come pre-installed on your Mac, and there are literally thousands more available for free on the Internet. Collectively, these little pieces of artwork put a human face on (let’s be honest here) the inhuman and somewhat foreign machine that is your Mac. Fortunately, you too can install beautiful icons by simply downloading and installing CandyBar ($29) or LiteIcon (free), two applications that allow you to replace your Mac’s default icons with custom icons.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/7-little-leopard-niceties/Tue, 27 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/7-little-leopard-niceties/Much has been made of Mac OS X Leopard and its major new features. In fact, if you know anything at all about Apple’s new operating system, you can probably name most of the big changes. Time Machine, Spaces, Stacks, and Cover Flow in the Finder are but a few of the major features. (We even covered these in our Mac OS X Leopard introduction article.) But what about everything else?https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/diatribe/Fri, 09 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/diatribe/Where to start with this Bush crowd? It’s a smorgasbord of shame, a cornucopia of corruption. Where to start? Iraq? Or how about its more focused scandals, like Blackwater’s shootings, Halliburton’s gouging, or Abu Ghraib? Katrina? Signing statements? Neocon designs on Iran? A paralysis sets in: where to start? George W. Bush—you can take this to the bank—will go down in history as the worst president we have ever had. Beside him, Warren Gamaliel Harding is a flaming idealist, James Buchanan a model of can-do competence.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/anza-where-desert-state-park/Sat, 03 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/anza-where-desert-state-park/A couple of weeks ago, Shea hit the road again, back to Southern California on his Fall Break at UNM. (Readers of this space know that SoCal is one of his favorite haunts.) My plan this time was to spend a couple of days in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. But there was time beforehand to hang out with Dan Shea (yes, that Dan Shea) in San Diego, visit a high school classmate in Del Mar, beg hospitality with my old friends Bob and Brenda in South Laguna (in return I lectured to a couple of Cosgrove’s classes at Saddleback College), and run up to Los Angeles to see my friend and mentor Dick Lanham and his wife.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/mac-your-xbox-360/Wed, 31 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/mac-your-xbox-360/If you’re a Mac user who owns an Xbox 360, you’re probably hankering to get your computer and game station talking to one another. After all, both of these powerful machines are capable of playing games, music, and video content. Why not share content between your Mac and Xbox 360? If you’re looking for solutions, we have some answers for you. These tips aren’t perfect – there’s still a lot that can be done in the way of developing applications that can facilitate communication between the two devices.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/age-and-age/Sat, 27 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/age-and-age/“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?” (Satchel Paige) There is a wonderful scene early in the movie Men in Black where an elderly, ordinary-looking man has been stricken violently with something. His companion immediately grabs hold of the man’s forehead and yanks his face off. We see then that the old man was just a simulacrum of a human being. Inside his brain case there sits instead a tiny alien, himself dying but still trying to work the levers (he looks like a man operating a backhoe frantically), so as to keep up the pretense—to keep up, literally, the façade.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/say-hello-to-mac-os-x-leopard/Thu, 25 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/say-hello-to-mac-os-x-leopard/Today, Apple will once again show that they’re good to the core as they let the latest cat, Leopard, out of the bag. Mac OS X 10.5 will show the world that even though they removed the word Computer from their name, Apple hasn’t fallen far from that tree. There, now that we’ve gotten the obligatory clichés out of the way, we can continue with the article. At 6:00 pm today, Apple will have their newest operating system for sale.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/make-a-mac-web-server-with-mamp-and-wordpress/Mon, 15 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/make-a-mac-web-server-with-mamp-and-wordpress/MAMP stands for Mac, Apache, PHP and MySQL, and installing it on your Mac creates a development environment for testing many of our favorite tools. You can do everything from browsing simple PHP files to testing complicated MySQL database driven applications right on your hard drive. Installing MAMP takes just a few minutes. Macinstruct’s Matt Cone created a tutorial on installing MAMP and installing Drupal, so I won’t go into installing MAMP here.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/speed-up-your-sluggish-mac/Mon, 15 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/speed-up-your-sluggish-mac/Remember when you first bought your shiny new Mac a couple years ago? It was snappy, speedy, and responsive – so responsive that at times it actually seemed to know what you were thinking. These days, however, it seems to be anything but speedy. Indeed, your aging Mac is now the epitome of slow. And more and more you’re finding that your Mac is unbearably sluggish and difficult to use.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/three-score-and-ten/Sun, 14 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/three-score-and-ten/“Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age.” Ah, youth and age and the awkward in-between. Most of us, the lucky ones (“consider the alternative,” runs the joke), will reach a ripe age.* I have been thinking about age lately, now that I am 65 and counting. I don’t mean that I am getting morbid about it, just that I am curious about the way we view ourselves and others, and the way others view us.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/h2o-ii/Sun, 07 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/h2o-ii/So tap water, as I said last week, got a bum rap. Even for many who drink water from the kitchen faucet, a very lucrative industry of home water filters has sprung up. Don’t drink the water until you have tortured it to a fare-thee-well, shriven it of its chemical sins. Ironically, much bottled water these days is just purified (and glorified?) tap water. And they are supposed to say so on the label.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-get-rid-of-favorite-styles-in-textedit/Fri, 05 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-get-rid-of-favorite-styles-in-textedit/We’ve used TextEdit since it was first released for all of our word processing and find it does almost everything we need. Recently, we decided it was time to modify or delete some of the early Favorite Styles we no longer needed or wanted to re-title to something more descriptive. We tried everything from deleting our TextEdit plist file to reinstalling TextEdit but we were still stuck with the same styles we created earlier and wanted to eliminate.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/import-minidv-tapes-with-broken-timecodes/Tue, 02 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/import-minidv-tapes-with-broken-timecodes/Video cameras and camcorders have become standard equipment for every barbecue, wedding, and family reunion. Unfortunately, these devices can sometimes screw up in a big way. One of the more common problems is known as the “broken timecodes” - a problem that results in your MiniDV tapes not reporting the correct timecode. If you record on a new MiniDV tape, rewind, play back what you recorded plus a little bit extra, and then record again, you leave a non-recorded section between your recorded sections.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/h2o/Sat, 29 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/h2o/All day I face the barren waste Without the taste of water, cool water Old Dan and I with throats burned dry And souls that cry for water, cool, clear, water. (fr. “Cool Water,” Bob Nolan, 1941) So it’s the late Seventies and you’re a venture capitalist. I am sitting in your office outlining my blockbuster proposal. I want to bring a new drink to market. I will package it in pint-sized plastic bottles and charge, oh, roughly what Coke and Pepsi charge for their concoctions.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/excerpts-from-the-ships-log-of-the-osx-tiger-iv/Sun, 23 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/excerpts-from-the-ships-log-of-the-osx-tiger-iv/Excerpts from the ship’s log of the ‘OSX Tiger IV,’ which as recently discovered by sarcastic deep-sea divers/Mac users. Finder’s Log, 08/20/06 We have finally left port! We have a fine new ship, the OSX Tiger IV, and a stout crew of hardy extensions (all fresh off well earned beta-leave) to man her. As we left the harbor and began to unfurl our untested Intel sails, many souls on deck witnessed a giant Jobsbird feasting on the bloated floating corpse of a Billgull, which is the best omen these salty old captain’s eyes have seen in nigh on twenty years of iSailing!https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/bringing-the-best-of-windows-to-mac-os-x/Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/bringing-the-best-of-windows-to-mac-os-x/I was a Windows user for nearly nine years of my life. Throughout that period of time, I had countless issues with my Windows PC and Windows as an operating system. In fact, there are specific issues that were so inconceivable, I actually remember the countless hours I spent resolving them. These issues eventually led me to enlightenment, i.e., a MacBook Pro. However, having been a Windows user for such a long period of time, I’m left missing specific Windows features.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/his-poor-wife/Sat, 15 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/his-poor-wife/No, I am not referring to the Long-Suffering Diana, though some might like to make that case. I am referring instead to the recent spate of disgraced politicians and others, those whose sexual shenanigans, real or alleged, have been exposed for all the world to snicker and gawk at, to mull over in glee or in dudgeon. Larry Craig is not the last, only the latest, and let me be even-handed about this.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/what-is-interference-robustness/Mon, 10 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/what-is-interference-robustness/Few topics have ever been more exhaustively analyzed and discussed within Internet/Macintosh based forums than the Apple AirPort feature “Interference Robustness.” The lack of information made available by Apple regarding the feature makes for a lot of confused and curious Mac users. Unfortunately the aforementioned forums appear to be the only venue through which one can find any significant information regarding Interference Robustness. In fact, I ran a quick search on “Mac Help” on my MacBook Pro and within all the documentation provided by Apple, Interference Robustness was mentioned on a single occasion.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/10-4-good-buddy/Sat, 08 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/10-4-good-buddy/I had to laugh. David Brooks, University of Chicago B.A. (History, ’83) and conservative pundit, was hunkered down with an over-the-road trucker in a diner in Virginia,* which got me fantasizing George Will jawing about porkbelly futures at the feed store or Thomas Sowell…but I find it too painful to fantasize Thomas Sowell. Let me say right off the bat that I like David Brooks’s stuff. He’s neither a ranter nor a knee-jerk ideologue and I often find in his columns a shiny intellectual bauble that I can play with for hours on end.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/safeguard-your-files-with-online-backups/Tue, 04 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/safeguard-your-files-with-online-backups/We all know we should back up our files, but who actually does? Well, we do most of the time, and right now we’re using two services to back up our email and critical work files - some PDFs, a book project and a lot of Photoshop PSD files. We have about 2.5 gig worth of “stuff” that needs to be backed up. At the moment, we’re using “Backup” from Apple since we have a .https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/pinocchio/Sun, 02 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/pinocchio/On the streets of Florence, second only to reproductions of David are reproductions—often keychain size—of Pinocchio, the world’s most famous puppet. This is as it should be, I suppose. Just as Michelangelo was a revered native son, so was Carlo Lorenzini, who gave us one of the world’s most famous children’s stories. We know him as Carlo Collodi, a name he took from his mother’s village. He was born in 1826, spent his life as a newspaperman and something of a political gadfly, and died in 1890.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/escams-collide/Sat, 25 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/escams-collide/FROM: Koffi Mensah-Maafo (koffimensahmaafo@geemail.com) TO: Dear Friend: kZinSky_4_Prez (anar-key-21@nohope4man.net) SUBJECT: Your Urgent need for Money business relationship sir! Dear prospectively partner, This is Honorable lowly Koffi Mensah-Maafo writing for you, being behalf of Very Honorable Mr. Iwo Kepsaan Otoo, the much slain upon Former Minister of Richness of Ghana. Being free now from enemies domestic by Exiling, His Ministerness is wanting interest in property purchase, estate procure-ishment, or and landed space in your country.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-add-email-accounts-to-apples-mail/Thu, 23 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-add-email-accounts-to-apples-mail/Every Mac comes with Apple’s very own killer email client. It’s called Mail, and in our opinion, it’s one of the greatest applications ever. Thanks to Mail, you don’t have to check each of your separate email accounts online anymore. Just pop them all into Apple’s Mail and you can read all of your messages in one simple application. But how do you get your email accounts into Mail? Or, if you’re already using Mail, how do you add other email accounts?https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-back-up-forgotten-items/Wed, 22 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-back-up-forgotten-items/We’re pretty good when it comes to backing up important files and folders, but like most people, there are items we forget to save from time to time. This tutorial will show you how to find those commonly used items and back them up for future reference. Bookmarks Before a recent hard drive “mishap,” we had a long list of bookmarks in Firefox that we overlooked when it came to backing up.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/introducing-appletv-an-honest-look/Tue, 21 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/introducing-appletv-an-honest-look/Now that most of the initial furor has died down, I think it’s time to write an article about the AppleTV. Why an article now – on a device released months ago and overanalyzed by both press and users alike? I believe that I and others who have had the AppleTV for a while now have enough experience with it to properly review it. Before I go into the review, let me tell you what led me to purchase the AppleTV.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/a-better-finder-make-it-work-harder/Sun, 19 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/a-better-finder-make-it-work-harder/With all of the wonderful work that Apple has done with Mac OS X to make navigating the computer simple, it’s time to make the Finder work harder for you. You’ve customized the dock, gotten accustomed to the column view, and are finding you work faster with Spotlight. Now, tweak those Finder windows to speed up your workflow even more. Like many applications in Mac OS X, you can customize the Finder’s toolbar by control + clicking (right clicking) the toolbar to show a contextual menu.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/a-grouch-abroad-pictures/Sun, 12 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/a-grouch-abroad-pictures/Il Duomo Street scene, w/ Campanile, “Bruno,” “Gladys” I’ll have his name in just a minute! The Long-suffering Diana Abstemious Shea Il Duomo, interior The dome, interior Baptism of Christ The Arno Harry’s Bar, along the Arno One of these statues isn’t. Washday A view from Fiesole Street scene, Fiesole Roman…and Roman Catholic Temple ruins Santa Croce and Dante statue Florence, and Fiesole, from the dome The Campanile, from the domehttps://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-automatically-open-applications/Fri, 10 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-automatically-open-applications/Did you know that you can set applications to automatically start when you turn on your Mac? It’s an extremely useful feature that can save you a couple minutes every day, especially if there are certain applications you use all the time. Here’s how to do it: From the Apple menu, select System Preferences. Select Accounts. Select the Login Items tab. To add applications to the start up list, click the + button and select the application.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-publish-ical-calendars-to-the-web/Thu, 09 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-publish-ical-calendars-to-the-web/Apple’s iCal is one of the best applications you can use to keep track of events, appointments, meetings, classes, and other everything else scheduling. But when you’re away from your Mac, how are you supposed to find out what you have lined up for the day? If you use iCal’s publish to web feature, you can simply visit your website for the latest and most up-to-date version of your calendar.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/change-your-default-web-browser-and-email-client/Tue, 07 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/change-your-default-web-browser-and-email-client/You can come across links to web pages and email addresses in everything from Word files to PDFs these days. When you click the links, your Mac opens the website or email message in your default web browser and email client, which by default is set to Safari and Apple’s Mail. But what if you use Firefox or another web browser? What happens if you use another email client to send and receive email messages?https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/cool-down-your-macbook-pro/Mon, 06 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/cool-down-your-macbook-pro/I’m a member of a small group of individuals who believed they were falling victim to the now infamous MacBook Pro overheating problem. In hindsight, I now believe my false alarm was fueled more by the barrage of media reports concerning the issue than an actual problem. But I decided I was going to take some preemptive measures to counteract the looming problems I would face if I allowed heat to ravage my system.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/a-grouch-abroad-ii/Sat, 04 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/a-grouch-abroad-ii/Friday afternoon, I think it was, we spent six months in the Uffizi Gallery. It sure felt like that, traipsing from room to room to room to room… Please understand. I get off on Renaissance religious art with the same fervor as the next guy. But please! ENOUGH! I got really maxed out on the Big A’s (Assumption, Ascension, Annunciation), not to mention the nativity scenes and all the pietas. And can we please relegate St.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/mac-system-monitoring-apps/Fri, 03 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/mac-system-monitoring-apps/There are millions of car owners out there who will probably never look under the hood and see their vehicle’s engine. They don’t care whether or not their engine is overheating or their oil pressure’s jacked up or their car battery is about to conk out on them. As long they can drive, they’re good to go. And in the same vein, many Mac users don’t care about their computer’s inner workings.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-optimize-safari-with-safarispeed/Thu, 02 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-optimize-safari-with-safarispeed/Does your online banking website or other service refuse to log you in when using Safari? Believe it or not, a lot of these sites are still optimized for Internet Explorer and not other browsers. You can complain to the IT departments, and some websites are compatible with Firefox, but if you are committed to Safari there is an option. SafariSpeed allows you to enable Safari’s debug menu, customize Safari’s look and feel, and speed it up a little.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-mac/Wed, 01 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-mac/If you’re new to Macs, or if you’re not all that savvy with tech stuff (like creating websites and backing up important information with an online service), you should look into Apple’s .Mac service. It’s a $100 per year service that unlocks a number of cool features built into your Mac. In fact, some of the features are so cool that even seasoned Mac users spring for it. Here are just a few of the features that come with .https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/12-step-program-for-recovering-windows-users/Tue, 31 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/12-step-program-for-recovering-windows-users/There was once a time in my life when I’d wake up in the morning with bloodshot eyes, a headache and a sore back. This was not, unfortunately, due to my endless partying with co-eds, rather it was the result of my endless battle with my Windows PC. Whether it was trying to get my printer to work, or trying to track down a driver, or even contemplating whether I should throw my PC out the window because I’d received the “blue screen of death” - the problems just never seemed to stop!https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/mailplane-better-gmail-for-your-mac/Mon, 30 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/mailplane-better-gmail-for-your-mac/When we discussed Google applications a couple weeks ago, we mentioned several applications that allowed you to check your Gmail account from your Mac’s Desktop. But these are only good insofar as you can see that you have new email messages waiting to be read. To actually read the email messages, you still have to open up a web browser and long into Gmail. We’ve also discussed how to use Gmail with Apple’s Mail, which works great if you only use your Gmail account on your Mac.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/a-grouch-abroad-an-idiosyncratic-report/Sat, 28 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/a-grouch-abroad-an-idiosyncratic-report/(Being an account of the recent trip that Shea and Diana, his long-suffering wife, took to the city of Florence [the one in Italy]. Cosmopolitan readers will note that the perspective is American and somewhat provincial. You have a problem with that?) Well…before we had even boarded our flight in Albuquerque they confiscated my Swiss Army knife. Yes, it was my fault, and the second knife I have lost to Homeland Security, but I take my bad omens where I find them.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/a-greenhorns-guide-to-the-mac-web/Fri, 27 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/a-greenhorns-guide-to-the-mac-web/Google and RSS feeds have fundamentally rewired the Internet in recent years. Instead of visiting our favorite websites on a daily basis, we search for content and sift through it in our RSS readers. But if you’re looking for the most up-to-date content from sources you trust, there’s still no better way to get it than visiting the actual websites. Which websites should you visit? That’s a good question. Until now, we’ve resisted the temptation to provide a links section on Macinstruct.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/use-your-ipod-as-a-removable-hard-drive/Thu, 26 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/use-your-ipod-as-a-removable-hard-drive/If you own a Mac (or any computer for that matter), chances are you’ll eventually have to transfer files to another computer. And you’ll probably want to back up your irreplaceable files and data, too. For these relatively trivial tasks, we recommend that you use your iPod. After all, your music, movies, and pictures probably take up less than half of your iPod’s hard drive space. You can use some of the free space as a storage device!https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/turn-your-mac-into-a-wireless-captive-portal-server/Wed, 25 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/turn-your-mac-into-a-wireless-captive-portal-server/What does a captive portal server, also called a NAC (Network Access Control) do? It can sandbox any wireless connection until some form of authentication is provided. These servers are used in many cafes and public places that offer wireless internet. For example, when you try to connect to the wireless network at Starbucks, it will force your web browser to the same page - no matter what URL you enter.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-files-on-your-mac/Tue, 24 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-files-on-your-mac/If you’re like us, you’ve got a lot of stuff on your Mac. Files, folders, and applications are lying all over the place. Most of that stuff is easy to find - applications reside in the Applications folder, and most of your files are in your Documents folder. But what about the stuff you can’t find? It’s hidden away somewhere, and you have no idea where to look for it. Track down the files and folders that got away with our handy tips for searching your Mac.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/using-quicksilvers-clipboard/Mon, 23 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/using-quicksilvers-clipboard/One of Quicksilver’s many handy features is the Clipboard module. When activated, it can keep track of the items that you have cut and copied, and let you see what is currently on the clipboard- what will appear when you paste. It can store rich formatted text and images just like the regular clipboard. First, check to see if the Clipboard module is installed. Open Quicksilver’s Plug-ins menu from the Preferences menu, the dock menu, or by typing the keyboard shortcut ⌘-Shift-’ when Quicksilver is open.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/eccentrics/Sat, 21 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/eccentrics/I have another book for you, friends: Carl Sifakis’s American Eccentrics. It is in fact the ideal bathroom book, with entries that can be enjoyed at a short sitting as it were. Sifakis simply gives one- or two-page accounts of some of our stranger countrymen and –women and starts the whole thing off with a very thoughtful introduction. As always, I recommend the book itself. What follows is just a taste.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/back-to-school-apps-for-your-mac/Fri, 20 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/back-to-school-apps-for-your-mac/It’s that time of the year again. Time to think about breaking out the books, looking sharp for all the attractive members of the opposite sex, making new friends, and hopefully learning something. We’re talking about school, of course. Let us tell you: There’s never been a better time to take your Mac into an educational environment. Free and low-cost programs can help you turn your Mac into the ultimate learning device, and prevent it from becoming another glorified MySpace machine!https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/create-a-web-development-environment-with-mamp/Wed, 18 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/create-a-web-development-environment-with-mamp/Those of us who have websites know that we need a development environment to work on new features, make changes, and just experiment. If you’re creating static HTML pages, you don’t need much - you can create the pages on your Mac and preview them locally in your web browser or a with WYSIWYG application like iWeb. However, things are a bit more complicated if you’re working with web applications that use PHP and MySQL.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-create-a-wireless-mac-file-server/Tue, 17 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-create-a-wireless-mac-file-server/Everybody knows you can use Apple’s AirPort cards and base stations to wirelessly connect to the Internet. You can also use your built-in AirPort card to turn your Mac into a file server and wirelessly transfer files to your Mac from another Mac! This feature is extremely handy for those who need to transfer files from an old Mac to a new one. It’s also useful for individuals who need to transfer files in office buildings or tight living areas, such as dormitories and houses.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/first-look-safari-3-public-beta/Mon, 16 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/first-look-safari-3-public-beta/Apple recently announced a new version of its Safari web browser for Windows PCs. They also created a new version for Macs, too. You can try out the Safari 3 Beta by going to http://www.apple.com/safari. Download and mount the .DMG. Double-click the installer. After installation is complete, restart your Mac. (There is an uninstaller included in the .DMG that will allow you to revert back to the previous release of Safari if you run into problems.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/whats-it-all-about-alfie/Sat, 14 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/whats-it-all-about-alfie/No, not that Alfie. I just couldn’t resist the title. While I was wrestling last week with the whole issue of incentives (“Carrots and Sticks”), a friend steered me to a remarkable book—Punished by Rewards—by one Alfie Kohn. Kohn is an erstwhile academic who, according to his website, spends all his time these years researching, writing, and lecturing at large. He is also a maverick, a contrarian, which is always tonic.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/top-five-firefox-extensions/Fri, 13 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/top-five-firefox-extensions/Mac users are extremely fortunate to have several web browsers to choose from. There’s Safari, Firefox, Camino, OmniWeb, SeaMonkey, Netscape, iCab, and many others. Safari is currently the winner when it comes to installed user base, and there’s nothing wrong with that - it’s a fine web browser! But you’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t at least try another web browser like Camino or OmniWeb. Firefox is one web browser we strongly recommend you install.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-make-a-movie-with-your-isight-camera/Thu, 12 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-make-a-movie-with-your-isight-camera/If you’ve recently purchased a new MacBook, MacBook Pro, or iMac, your computer has a built-in iSight camera. Veteran Mac users might still have the external iSight web cameras that were sold for years before being discontinued on December 16, 2006. Thanks to applications like Photo Booth (which allows you to take crazy pictures of yourself and others) and iChat (which lets you video conference with friends and family), you can have hours of fun with your iSight camera.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-gmail-with-apples-mail/Wed, 11 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-gmail-with-apples-mail/Do you have a Gmail account? Do you know that Google’s free email service works with Apple’s Mail client? It does, and it’s pretty nifty! Using Gmail with Mail.app means that you won’t have to use Google’s website to send and receive email messages, and you won’t have to look at those pesky text advertisements Google displays next to your messages. Here’s how to use Gmail with Apple’s Mail: If you don’t already have a Gmail account, you’ll need to get one.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/ten-indispensable-itunes-tips/Tue, 10 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/ten-indispensable-itunes-tips/A coworker recently told us that “iTunes is a pretty straightforward application.” He’s right, of course - it is pretty straightforward after you get the hang of it. And undoubtedly most people will be satisfied with merely purchasing and playing songs, creating playlists, and burning CDs. For those who want to go a little further, however, we offer these ten indispensable iTunes tips to make your Mac music-listening experience even better!https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/bbedits-code-folding-cleans-your-work-space/Mon, 09 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/bbedits-code-folding-cleans-your-work-space/If you haven’t noticed, we’re big fans of Bare Bones’ BBEdit around here. We use it for just about everything, and if you ask us, it’s about as close to text-editing perfection as you can get! New in BBEdit 8.6 is Code Folding. Code Folding literally collapses all of the text and/or data between two predefined entities in a specific computer language to reduce complexity of the content in the editor window.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/carrots-and-sticks/Sat, 07 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/carrots-and-sticks/Last week I listed the three “Free Response” AP questions. I was delegated to read the third one—all week long. But it was a good question and I’d like to share it with you. It is based on a true-life incident. A couple of years ago a high school student wrote to Randy Cohen, “The Ethicist” columnist in The New York Times Magazine. This student’s school was always having charity drives of one sort or another.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/turn-your-mac-into-a-telephone/Fri, 06 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/turn-your-mac-into-a-telephone/So, there was this phone thing last week, right? And we weren’t lucky enough to get in on it, even though we really wanted to. The iPhone is just too friggin’ expensive for us. Maybe you’re in the same boat: You can’t quite bring yourself to pay more than $2,000 over a two-year period for a cell phone. Or maybe you live outside of the United States. Or maybe you own an iPhone, but still want to be able to take and receive phone calls on your Mac.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/a-beginners-guide-to-quicksilver/Tue, 03 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/a-beginners-guide-to-quicksilver/Quicksilver is a freeware application launcher and productivity program for Mac OS X. With a couple of keystrokes, you can quickly and effortlessly start applications, open files and folders, move things around on your Mac, and even navigate your iTunes library - all without using your mouse! Quicksilver integrates seamlessly with Mac OS X and most popular Mac applications. With a little practice, using Quicksilver will become second nature, and you’ll be using it without even knowing it.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/validate-html-files-in-bbedit/Mon, 02 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/validate-html-files-in-bbedit/Validating HTML documents is an important step in web development that can sometimes be overlooked in the hasty attempt to publish web pages. Validation checks your HTML against the formatting standard developed and maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium. Valid HTML markup ensures that a web browser will be able to correctly interpret what you have coded. Thank goodness BBEdit, one of the best Mac web development applications, can do this right out of the box!https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/summer-camp/Sat, 30 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/summer-camp/I have just come back from a sojourn in Daytona Beach, where the weather was unusually pleasant for mid-June. I was, however, not lollygagging on the littoral all day. Oh no. I was holed up in the Convention Center across A1A from the Hilton (where we stayed in sybaritic luxury) reading Advanced Placement essays for eight hours a day. Well, somebody has to. This year there were over 900 of us plowing through about 280,000 booklets in English Language and Composition.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/must-have-mac-maintenance-apps/Fri, 29 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/must-have-mac-maintenance-apps/According to Murphy’s law, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. This holds especially true for mechanical and electronic devices. If you don’t change your car’s motor oil, your engine will eventually seize up. And if you don’t perform regularly scheduled maintenance on your Mac, your computer could be in a world of hurt. Mac OS X is based on the Darwin operating system, which uses many FreeBSD components. In plain English, this means that your Mac has lot of UNIX-like stuff under the hood - stuff like system logs, cron jobs, system cache, and much more.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-make-your-mac-more-comfortable/Wed, 27 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-make-your-mac-more-comfortable/Is your Mac’s Desktop looking a bit cluttered these days? Are your files and folders out of control? Do you need a new way to organize stuff on your Mac? This interactive tutorial can help! By using DeskShade and DragThing - two great shareware applications - you can sweep cluttered files and folders under your Desktop’s rug. Just click here to launch the interactive tutorial.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-save-text-files-as-pdf-files/Tue, 26 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-save-text-files-as-pdf-files/PDF, which stands for “Portable Document Format,” has long been the desktop publishing standard for computer users everywhere. It’s an open-standard file format developed by Adobe and supported by many applications like Preview. You’re probably used to opening user manuals and help guides saved in the PDF file format, but did you know that you can also save your text files as PDF files? You can - Mac OS X makes it easy!https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-install-ram-in-a-power-mac-g4/Mon, 25 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-install-ram-in-a-power-mac-g4/Adding more memory, or RAM, is the least expensive and easiest way to upgrade your Mac. It lets you run more applications and keep more files open simultaneously. Most Macs have more than one slot to install RAM into, but certain laptops and early iMacs have limited slots, so in those cases it helps to purchase the largest memory sticks you can. How do you know which memory is right for your machine?https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/socal-ii/Sat, 23 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/socal-ii/ Tip: If you missed last week’s Weekend Wonk, be sure to check it out. It’s the first part of this series. Slept well? Hope so. Let’s go. About 4 miles south of Kingman we will leave I-40 and head into the mountains on old 66, cresting Sitgreaves Pass at 3652 feet and dropping down into the old mining town of Oatman, AZ. This was surely the most formidable part of the old road.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/must-have-google-mac-apps/Fri, 22 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/must-have-google-mac-apps/There’s a lot of information on the Internet these days. In fact, according to one report, there are now over 11.5 billion web pages. It’s anybody’s guess how we’re supposed to find the stuff we’re looking for - it’s like finding a needle in a haystack! Fortunately, there are some excellent tools at our disposal, like Google, the company that links us to information. You could, of course, simply use Google’s website to search, manage your Gmail account, and add events to your Google calendar.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-itunes-connecting-and-syncing-your-ipod/Wed, 20 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-itunes-connecting-and-syncing-your-ipod/If you’ve just purchased an iPod, you’re going to want to put some music on it. But how do you do that? In a previous tutorial, we discussed how to use iTunes. Now you’ll need to apply that knowledge in order to transfer music and other content to your iPod. In this interactive tutorial, we’ll show you how to connect an iPod to your Mac, tailor iTunes to meet your needs, and then transfer music and other content to your iPod.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/add-extra-fans-to-your-mac/Mon, 18 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/add-extra-fans-to-your-mac/Summer’s finally here! Soon we’ll hear kids laughing and playing in pools, smell burgers and ‘dogs on the grill, feel pimped-out 4-door sedans blasting rap songs, and listen to people complaining about how their new air conditioner conked out on the hottest day of the year. Don’t let that happen to your Mac. Whether you’re running several CPU-intensive applications at the same time, or you’re in the heat of battle playing multiplayer games, you don’t want your Mac to conk out during the latest DVD-rip or frag-fest this summer.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-create-an-internet-radio-station/Sun, 17 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-create-an-internet-radio-station/Have you ever wanted to stream music to all of the computers in your house? Have you ever wanted to be a DJ? Have you ever wanted to create an online radio station full of music licensed under the Creative Commons, or music you create yourself? This tutorial will explain how to create your very own Internet radio station with Rouge Amoeba’s Nicecast. Here’s how to create your own Internet radio station:https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/socal-i/Sat, 16 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/socal-i/Having a friend in L.A., another in South Laguna, and a son in San Diego, I have over the years become a real aficionado of Southern California. I know that SoCal is an easy target for critics: ticky-tacky sprawl, the kingdom of the mall, developers on a roll, freeways out of control (you see that it even inspires its own doggerel). But that is only half of it. There is solitude and spectacle abounding.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-your-mac-into-an-ftp-server/Wed, 13 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-your-mac-into-an-ftp-server/Several weeks ago, we showed you how to turn your Mac into a web server. That article is useful for individuals needing to host web pages on their Mac in a pinch, but it doesn’t really go far enough. After all, any good web server should be remotely accessible - that is, you should be able to add and remove files from your Mac when you’re away from home. You need to turn your Mac into an FTP server!https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/use-iphoto-to-make-so-so-pictures-super-cool/Tue, 12 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/use-iphoto-to-make-so-so-pictures-super-cool/If you listen to the digital photography experts, even the well-meaning experts, you might walk away thinking that unless you use expensive software like Aperture or Photoshop, you cannot possibly make art or even a decent image with cheap applications like iPhoto. We’ve never listened to the so-called “experts” much, so believe us when we say that ignoring the “experts” can give you an edge in creating really beautiful art!https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/retirement/Sat, 09 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/retirement/I did it. I retired about two weeks ago and it seems fitting that I mark the occasion in this cyber journal or whatever you want to call it. I am now a retiree, official senior citizen, duffer, old fart, whatever. If you want to give it some dignity, I am now professor emeritus after 30 years at the University of New Mexico, the last dozen of them in the English Department.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/free-flickr-apps-for-your-mac/Fri, 08 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/free-flickr-apps-for-your-mac/If you have a Mac and a digital camera, you probably know a thing or two about managing digital photos. Of course, iPhoto is a wonderful application that does a great job of managing photos on your Mac. But when it comes to sharing your photos with friends and family members, iPhoto comes up short, especially if you decided to forgo the expensive .Mac subscription. What application or website should you use to share your photos?https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-clone-and-backup-your-hard-drive/Thu, 07 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-clone-and-backup-your-hard-drive/When you need to clone your drive, or simply do a full backup, someone usually tells you to use Carbon Copy Cloner (Donation Recommended) or SuperDuper! ($27.95). Sure, both of these applications are great programs, but they aren’t necessary. You can use Apple’s own software that comes free with your Mac! We’re talking about Disk Utility ( User > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.app ) It’s free, easy-to-use, and it does the job right.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-itunes-getting-started/Wed, 06 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-itunes-getting-started/If you’ve just purchased your first Mac or iPod, you’re probably hankering for iTunes, Apple’s free media software. Like all of Apple’s software, iTunes is fun and easy to use. However, beginners still might need a little help. As new features have been added to iTunes over the years, the learning curve has gotten steeper. Even Mac experts can need help with iTunes these days! In this tutorial, you’ll learn two different ways to add music to your iTunes Library:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/create-printing-profiles/Tue, 05 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/create-printing-profiles/Do you print to color printers, but only want to print in black and white? Or do you sometimes want to duplex or staple your print jobs? Chances are you’ll want to do all of these things from time to time, and you’ll want to save the settings for reference later. Well, now you can! Printing profiles are a quick and easy way to save settings that you frequently use, but would like to retrieve without having to try and remember.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/use-bbedits-clippings-menu-to-optimize-workflow/Mon, 04 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/use-bbedits-clippings-menu-to-optimize-workflow/We’ve written a lot about TextWrangler, the free text editor from Bare Bones Software. In fact, we like TextWrangler so much that we included it in our list of 20 must-have Mac apps. But if you’re a Mac power-user or programmer, there’s nothing like BBEdit - TextWrangler’s big brother. It has all sorts of cool stuff, like the clipping menu. To start using the BBEdit clippings menu, you’ll need to launch BBEdit.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/worlds-worst-poet/Sun, 27 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/worlds-worst-poet/Give ear, Gentle Reader: And the Tower of London is most gloomy to behold And the crown of England lies there, begemmed with precious stones and gold. King Henry the Sixth was murdered there by the Duke of Glo’ster, And when he killed him with his sword he called him an imposter. Please meet William Topaz McGonagall, born in Edinburgh in 1825 or 1830, and dying there in 1902, a man with so tin an ear that it never occurred to him that the last line, above, exactly replicated the tune of “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” a man who could rhyme “ruins” with “bruins” and count it a poetic coup, and yet a man who ranked himself right up there with the Bard of Avon.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/twenty-must-have-mac-apps/Fri, 25 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/twenty-must-have-mac-apps/Every Mac you can buy these days comes pre-installed with powerful and practical applications. You get the amazing iLife suite as well as other applications like Safari and Mail.app. In fact, Macs include so much software that you could probably do practically everything you need to do without ever downloading or purchasing another application. But if you did that, you’d be missing out on dozens of freeware and shareware applications that can help you do much more with your Mac.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-mute-your-macs-startup-sound/Thu, 24 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-mute-your-macs-startup-sound/If you have a Mac, you’re probably tired of hearing the familiar startup chime every time you turn your Mac on. Maybe you have a baby in the house that you don’t want to disturb. Or perhaps you just want your MacBook to be quiet when you turn it on in the coffee shop. Unfortunately, not every Mac allows you to turn that stupid startup sound off. It can be the bane of your existence!https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-create-a-cell-phone-ringtone/Wed, 23 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-create-a-cell-phone-ringtone/So you want a ringtone for your cell phone, huh? You could purchase one from your cell phone provider, of course, but it’s also pretty easy to make a ringtone with your Mac. All you need is your favorite song, some free software, and a cellphone capable of connecting to your Mac (via Bluetooth, USB, etc.). Here’s how to do it. Decide what song you would like to use as a ringtone.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/use-pithhelmet-to-block-internet-ads/Tue, 22 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/use-pithhelmet-to-block-internet-ads/Ever wonder how to block advertising on websites? If you’re a Safari user, all you need is PithHelmet, a practically essential plug-in for Safari. PithHelmet is free to download and try, but we’d encourage you to drop the $10 for a license. It is quite a powerful tool, as you’ll soon see. PithHelmet automatically blocks all ads on most any given webpage using an arsenal of pre-made rules. However, sometimes those ugly banners can slip through the cracks and into view.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/use-applescript-to-control-startup-apps/Mon, 21 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/use-applescript-to-control-startup-apps/You probably know that your Mac can automatically open applications when you turn it on or log into a user account. The problem is that automatically opening Internet-dependent applications (such as iChat or Mail.app) can slow down your Mac if you’re not connected to the internet. To improve your Mac’s startup time, we’ll utilize a simple AppleScript to determine whether or not your Mac is connected to the Internet, and then automatically open selected applications if an Internet connection is present.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/sabine-baring-gould/Sat, 19 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/sabine-baring-gould/What? You’ve never heard of Sabine Baring-Gould? Dear me. A Google search will turn up a dozen pages of citations (no, really). There is a Sabine Baring-Gould Appreciation Society (small but determined). He wrote more histories, novels, tracts, sermons, essays, and whatnot—especially whatnot—than a half-dozen lesser men could have hoped to. Dear me, it’s time you were enlightened. I first turned up “S. Baring-Gould” (as he styled himself) while browsing aimlessly in the University of New Mexico library, and was immediately hooked.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/five-mac-apps-for-professional-presentations/Fri, 18 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/five-mac-apps-for-professional-presentations/At some point, you’ll probably call on your trusty Mac to help you make a presentation in front of a live audience. Whether you’re at work or school, we’ve got just the tools for you. We’ve rounded up the best presentation applications for Mac OS X - the ones that will help you look classy and organized. The best part is that they’re all free! Mouse Locator 2Point5Fish http://www.2point5fish.com/ If you’re giving a technical presentation and want to point out important mouse actions, Mouse Locator is for you.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-play-windows-media-files/Wed, 16 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-play-windows-media-files/There are lots of proprietary video delivery systems out there. Apple’s QuickTime, Adobe’s Flash, and Microsoft’s Windows Media Player are among the most popular. And guess what? There’s no Windows Media Player for Mac. (We know - you’re shocked that Microsoft wouldn’t make one of their applications for Windows and Mac.) Believe it or not, this is a pretty big deal. Lots of websites embed audio and video clips that have to be opened with Windows Media Player, and there’s also a lot of Windows Media Player content you can download.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-transfer-lp-records-to-your-mac/Wed, 16 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-transfer-lp-records-to-your-mac/We didn’t live through the heyday of vinyl, but we do own a few LPs. The recording industry is currently trying to figure out if we have the right to “own” digital copies of our records. While they work on that, we’re going to quietly show you how to digitize old LPs and cassette tapes. Just don’t put the resulting files on a peer-to-peer network! Connect Your Turntable to Your Mac First, you need to connect your turntable to your Mac.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/boot-into-windows-with-quicksilver/Mon, 14 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/boot-into-windows-with-quicksilver/If you have an Intel Mac with a Boot Camp partitioned hard drive, you’re probably getting sick of restarting your Mac again and again, just so you can hit the option key to select your Windows partition. In this article, we’ll show you how to create an AppleScript and Quicksilver hotkey that will let you easily restart your Mac and boot into Windows - without the hassle of selecting your partition!https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/harold-welsh-or-welsch-revisited/Sat, 12 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/harold-welsh-or-welsch-revisited/Back in March, I wrote about my erstwhile colleague Harold Welsh, brought low by an inadvertent pun ("Great Moments in Teaching"). But the account was not as it seemed. I had not had contact with Harold in 40 years, but we do have a mutual friend who supplied an address—Harold is still in Illinois, not far from the scene of the alleged happening—and suggested that I send him a copy of the column.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/mastering-mail-app-a-beginners-guide/Fri, 11 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/mastering-mail-app-a-beginners-guide/If you use Apple’s Mail application, you may be looking at the menu options and wondering what they’re good for. Most of us just use email to keep in touch with friends, family, and coworkers, right? Well, we’re going to show you what other features are available to make mailing easier and more convenient. We’ll cover the options in Mail’s preferences and show you what’s possible. We’ll assume that you already have your email account set up in Mail.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-capture-audio-and-video/Thu, 10 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-capture-audio-and-video/Digital media has come a long way in recent years. Thanks to iTunes and other content services like it, we can purchase music, television shows, and even movies online. But even though iTunes is a great application that provides a much needed service, we sometimes find ourselves wishing we could record and save other audio and video content. You know, like imbedded news videos, films made with Flash, or even a live radio interview with Steve Wozniak.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-specify-default-airport-networks/Wed, 09 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-specify-default-airport-networks/Do you ever turn on your Mac, only to find that it connects to another wireless network - one other than your own? Do you have to manually connect to your own home or business wireless network every time you start your computer? Sometimes this can be a problem, but in a few easy steps you can fix your WiFi woes once and for all by configuring AirPort to work exactly the way you want it to.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/indispensable-tips-for-new-mac-users/Tue, 08 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/indispensable-tips-for-new-mac-users/You’ve just made the leap from Windows to the Macintosh. Great, but now what? Everything is going well. There’s no useless Windows key, and the controls for all the windows are on the left. It took a little while to get used to those minor differences, but in the end you realized that the differences are just that - minor. So what’s so great about Macs? Sure, the Aqua interface is pretty and has none of those pesky Windows error messages, but it’s just a computer.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-remotely-connect-to-windows-pcs/Mon, 07 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-remotely-connect-to-windows-pcs/If you have a shiny, new Intel Mac, there are all kinds of ways to run Windows while keeping the friendly environs of OS X close at hand. However, there are times when you may need to hop back and forth between the two systems and you have a non-Intel Mac or your Windows PC is in a separate box (and possibly in a different part of town). Microsoft has a very slick (and free) solution that isn’t very well known: Microsoft Remote Desktop for OS X.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/of-escalades-and-steak-knives/Sat, 05 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/of-escalades-and-steak-knives/If they are not worming through your phone line, they are lying in wait in your mailbox: folks who want to reward you magnificently just for coming to their solar energy seminar or tromping about their chunk of mountain or mesa. It’s the reward that tickles me, and by now it’s familiar to most of us. Not only does the redundant “free gift” await you, but it will be one of several things, to wit:https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/joost-free-internet-tv-on-your-mac/Fri, 04 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/joost-free-internet-tv-on-your-mac/Watch out, iTunes. There’s a new interactive content provider in town and, unlike the other competitors that came and went, this one looks like it’s here to stay. Joost (pronounced “juiced”) is a free Internet television broadcasting service that sports a sexy interface. This next-generation Mac application lets you watch certain prerecorded television shows whenever and wherever you want. Sure, you’ve been able to watch television shows on your Mac for years with applications like BitTorrent.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-idvd-themes-in-imovie/Thu, 03 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-idvd-themes-in-imovie/iMovie is an awesome video editing application that comes free with every Mac - that part we’ve figured out. You’ve probably already edited with it and figured out that it is capable of a lot. But what if you want more than what the program already offers? What if you feel that the five themes provided in iMovie won’t benefit your video project? Let’s look at the current themes in iMovie.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-play-mac-games-without-cds-dvds/Tue, 01 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-play-mac-games-without-cds-dvds/So you just bought a bunch of Mac games, huh? We have a bit of bad news for you… Thanks to software piracy protection, you’ll need to carry around all of the CDs and DVDs your games came on. You see, because software developers don’t want people sharing games for free online, they’ve built in special protective features – one of which requires you to have the game’s CD or DVD in your Mac to play.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/basic-mac-troubleshooting/Mon, 30 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/basic-mac-troubleshooting/If you listen to The Tech Guy, the syndicated radio show in which Leo Laporte offers advice on how to fix computer problems, you may find yourself in the following situation. “Leo said to create a new user account and see if the problem still persists…” But how exactly do you do that? Good question. This tutorial will explain some basic Mac troubleshooting techniques and how to accomplish them. Restart This is one of the simplest things you can do to cure your Mac’s ills, and we recommend doing it before performing any other troubleshooting tasks.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/respectable-laughter-only/Sat, 28 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/respectable-laughter-only/FROM: ME TO: ANYONE WITH AN EMAIL ADDRESS SUBJECT: FWD: ADVICE ON INTERNET HUMOR – (DO NOT FORWARD!!!) > > > Slaving away at a keyboard all week got you down? Do you start to loathe the feel of a mouse in your hand before lunchtime? Do you have trouble reading the prices at Starbucks because they aren’t on a backlit LCD monitor eleven inches from your face? Does The Grind have you so ground that you actually want to open that email from Billy down in Receiving which obviously contains a quadruple-forwarded .https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-save-quicktime-movies-without-quicktime-pro/Fri, 27 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-save-quicktime-movies-without-quicktime-pro/QuickTime is a great application, but if you don’t upgrade to QuickTime Pro, you won’t be able to save QuickTime movies you find on the Internet. Or will you? If you aren’t willing to shell out thirty dollars for Quicktime Pro and you want to download video clips to your computer, here’s a quick and dirty way of doing so. Just note that this will only work with videos and not streaming or protected content.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-your-mac-into-a-web-server/Thu, 26 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-turn-your-mac-into-a-web-server/Mac OS X is built on Darwin – a Unix-like, open source operating system developed by Apple and built on FreeBSD. This means that Mac users have access to free built-in server applications, like the Apache web server. With Apache and the DynDNS service, you can turn your Mac into a powerful web server. Anyone will be able to access the website stored on your Mac! The best part is that you can host a website on your Mac for free.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/make-a-movie-with-imovie-and-a-digital-camera/Wed, 25 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/make-a-movie-with-imovie-and-a-digital-camera/We’ve used iMovie for a couple of years to make movies (well, short videos). It’s a great tool: Easy to use, and inexpensive! Here, in a nutshell, is how you can do it too. We’ll show you how to do it without an expensive camcorder – from start to finish, and on the cheap. We’re slanting our tutorial to those of you who have digital cameras (use the movie mode – you won’t regret it!https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/customize-your-macs-icons/Tue, 24 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/customize-your-macs-icons/Using custom icons has always been an easy way to spice up your Mac – even prior to Mac OS X! In our opinion, Mac OS X finally made icons beautiful. It’s so easy change your icons that we’re always surprised when fellow Mac users marvel at our icons. Here’s what our user folder looks like: Kinda snazzy, right? The first step to custom icons is to download some. I usually get mine for free at InterFace.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/the-i-man-goeth/Sat, 21 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/the-i-man-goeth/(Can you stand one more column about Don Imus, Gentle Reader? That’s what I thought. Well, since you are staring at the monitor anyway you can do some surfing, play Tetris, whatever, while I indulge myself. You won’t hurt my feelings.) Don Imus, talk show shock jock, deserved to be fired. Let’s get that much out of the way. Even his defenders did not suggest that the insult to the Rutgers women basketball players was defensible.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/better-internet-printing-with-mac-os-x-services/Fri, 20 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/better-internet-printing-with-mac-os-x-services/One of the more frustrating aspects of the Internet is printing those darn webpages! Sure, some websites have helpful “Print” links that take you to pages specially formatted for printing, but many sites don’t provide such help. (Yes, Macinstruct is guilty as charged!) If you’ve ever tried to print a webpage and had half the page chopped off, this tip is for you. Enter Services – one of the least known features of Mac OS X.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/do-more-with-dashboard/Tue, 17 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/do-more-with-dashboard/Dashboard is one of the coolest Mac applications, isn’t it? It’s easy-to-use, it’s beautiful, and it wows your PC-using friends every time. With the push of a button, all of your widgets zoom into view and you have information at your fingertips! If you pack your Dashboard with widgets, like we do ours, you’re probably looking to trick out your ‘board even more. You know – take things even further to wow your friends again and again.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-stop-spam/Tue, 17 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-stop-spam/Email is almost the perfect communications method. It allows people to send free messages that can be accessed instantly, it allows people to create electronic communication archives, and it breathes new life into the age-old tradition of letter writing. Email was so close to attaining electronic communications utopia! Unfortunately, it never made it, and it never will, because the spammers went and ruined everything. If you use email, you know what we’re talking about.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/advanced-airport-extreme-configuration/Mon, 16 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/advanced-airport-extreme-configuration/In last’s week Nerdification Station, we covered AirPort Extreme basics. We showed you how to use the Airport Utility for the first time, and we walked you through the entire AirPort Extreme set up procedure. If you read that article and followed along with your own AirPort Extreme Base Station, you should have a working, password-protected wireless network. So what do you do now? Start tweaking! We’re not going to cover every detail of the AirPort Extreme, because we’d be here all day if we did!https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/healthcare-in-america-get-it-or-die/Sat, 14 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/healthcare-in-america-get-it-or-die/It’s no secret that in this country of wealth and global power we are facing an internal crisis. The crisis I speak of is not poverty, it is not adult illiteracy, it isn’t even that horrible grinding noise I hear when I’m too drunk to work the clutch. No, the crisis I speak of today is one that will eventually decide the fate of every man, woman, and child in the USA.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-listen-to-internet-radio-stations/Thu, 12 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-listen-to-internet-radio-stations/Much has been made recently of podcasts – the prerecorded audio and video shows that are freely available for download on the Internet and through the iTunes Music Store. We’re big fans of podcasts! But there are times when we want to listen to live, streaming music and radio shows. That’s when we fire up iTunes and tune into an Internet radio station. You see, there are literally thousands of radio stations broadcasting over the Internet.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/file-taxes-with-your-mac/Tue, 10 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/file-taxes-with-your-mac/Mark Twain said that the only inevitabilities in life are death and taxes. We’re certainly not about to argue against those words of wisdom! But as tax day in the United States fast approaches (it’s April 17, 2007), we would like to know how to file our taxes as quickly and painlessly as possible. One thing we don’t want to do is use the standard government-issue paperwork. It’s too complicated, too time-consuming, and too conducive to errors.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-customize-your-desktop-and-screen-saver/Tue, 10 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-customize-your-desktop-and-screen-saver/Putting a picture on your desktop and adding your own screen saver is one of the easiest ways to customize your Mac. There are loads of free desktop pictures and screen savers available on the Internet – just search for them! In fact, Apple has a website chock full of free screen savers. You have a couple different display options when it comes to desktop pictures and screen savers. You can add just one picture that will be displayed on your desktop all the time, or you can choose to shuffle through your desktop pictures to make a custom slide show for your desktop.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/running-a-requiem-singing-a-marathon/Sat, 07 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/running-a-requiem-singing-a-marathon/I am runner and a singer. More specifically, I run marathons and I sing (bass) with the University of New Mexico Chorus. I ran my first marathon—the Duke City, here in Albuquerque—in 1986, I joined the chorus a couple of years later, and here I am in 2007 still running and still singing. Early on I began to note similarities between the two avocations. But first, some background. A marathon is a footrace over a 26.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/keep-track-of-people-with-address-book/Fri, 06 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/keep-track-of-people-with-address-book/Every Mac ships with a great little organization application called Address Book. This Apple program can help you keep track of friends and family, and it integrates seamlessly with other Apple applications, like Mail. If you’re new to Address Book, you’ll find it to be a very comprehensive way of keeping track of contacts, friends, email lists, and more. There’s so much power packed into Address Book that you’ll wonder why you didn’t use it sooner!https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-block-internet-advertising/Thu, 05 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-block-internet-advertising/Should there be advertising on the Internet? It depends on who you ask. Internet experts and pundits everywhere will tell you that we need advertising to support websites and foster the creation of great online content. Joe “Internet-Surfer” Sixpack and his pals will tell you that they hate animated banners, pop-up windows, and even the newfangled textual advertisements. Who’s right? We don’t know and we don’t care. We do know that we detest Internet advertising.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-ipod-your-ghetto-ride/Wed, 04 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-ipod-your-ghetto-ride/In the May 2007 issue of Mac|Life, there’s a step-by-step article that shows you how to wire an iPod connection into your car stereo. Mac|Life’s steps include removing the stereo from your dashboard and hooking up an external connector through the rear stereo port (RCA auxiliary inputs), if your car stereo has one. Although it’s very informative, the article failed to mention that pulling your factory-installed stereo out of your dash might void your warranty.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-make-a-mac-start-up-disk-image/Mon, 02 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-make-a-mac-start-up-disk-image/If you’re into preventative maintenance and creating backups like we are, you’ll need to create a Mac start up disk image. It’s an indispensable tool – one which could save your data and prevent a lot of headaches down the road. This how-to will show you how to make an image of one hard drive and store it on another drive. This image will be compressed and will make recovery fast and easy.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/breaking-the-law-or-broken-laws/Sat, 31 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/breaking-the-law-or-broken-laws/News item (The Week, 23 March) Twenty-one years ago, Juan Matamoros was ticketed for public urination in Massachusetts. Now 49 and living in Florida, Matamoros is being forced to move with his family, because a new law bans “sex offenders” from living within 2,500 feet of a child-care facility. Matamoros admits he was technically convicted of “gross, lewd and lascivious behavior” for peeing in public, but argues that he poses no danger to children.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/sherlock-the-forgotten-mac-application/Thu, 29 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/sherlock-the-forgotten-mac-application/It was a big hit in Mac OS 8 and 9, an interesting application in Mac OS 10.2 and 10.3, and now it’s been all but forgotten. I’m talking about Sherlock, of course – Apple’s file and web searching tool. Sure, you can search your Mac with Spotlight and get Internet information with Dashboard Widgets, but Sherlock can still come in handy. Look for it in your Mac’s Applications folder.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-install-ram-in-a-powerbook-g4/Wed, 28 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-install-ram-in-a-powerbook-g4/Installing RAM into your PowerBook G4 is the easiest way to breathe new life into your aging portable. This inexpensive upgrade can be performed by anyone in a matter of minutes, and after you’re finished, your Mac will run like new! RAM, or “Random Access Memory,” is a type of data storage used by your computer. RAM is a little like your hard disk drive, only there are no moving parts, and RAM is faster - a lot faster.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-bluetooth-headsets-with-your-mac/Wed, 28 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-bluetooth-headsets-with-your-mac/Forget the iPhone. You can make free Internet phone calls with your Mac to anyone in the world! You don’t need anything, really: Most new Macs ship with iChat AV, a built-in microphone, and an iSight camera. In fact, all you need is another friend with a Mac and iChat AV. But if you’re as serious about Internet phone calls as we are, you’re going to need some serious equipment. That’s where the bluetooth headsets come in.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-backup-your-mac-using-rsync/Mon, 26 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-backup-your-mac-using-rsync/Do you manually back up your Mac to an external hard drive? Do you know it is very easy to make automatic backups without spending any time or money on fancy applications? We’ll show you how to do it! Rsync is a wonderful backup tool that packs a powerful punch and is easy to set up. This free application is included with nearly all Unix operating systems – including Mac OS X.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/put-internet-images-on-your-desktop-with-automator/Sun, 25 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/put-internet-images-on-your-desktop-with-automator/Do you ever get tired of the same old Desktop image? Do you like cool images of space? Have you always wanted to play around with Apple’s Automator? Did you ever wonder if your dentist was the one out of four who didn’t recommend Trident to their patients who chew gum? Well, this article can’t help you with the last item, but if the others intrigued you, read on! In this article, you will learn how to change your Desktop background every day with an image downloaded from NASA’s Cool Astronomy Picture of the Day.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/great-moments-in-teaching-ii/Sat, 24 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/great-moments-in-teaching-ii/Last week I made fun of poor Harold Welsh and his colon problem (or perhaps his problem colon). This week is my turn; it’s only fair. So, two stories at Shea’s expense. I taught my first class, a freshman composition class, in the fall of 1964 at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins. I was twenty-two years old. I doubt very much that I slept the night before that very first meeting.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-control-cable-creep/Fri, 23 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-control-cable-creep/Cable creep happens slowly. You buy your Mac, you setup the keyboard and mouse, and everything is fine. But then comes the digital camera, the printer, the iPod, the camcorder, the USB hub and everything else. Before you know it, you have a tangled mess of cables on your desk. Don’t become a victim of cable creep! Organize your cables early and often. How did it get so far? And how the heck is this systems administrator going to swap out a dead switch?https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-connect-multiple-monitors-to-your-mac/Mon, 19 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-connect-multiple-monitors-to-your-mac/Everyone knows that Apple’s Displays are cool - really friggin’ cool - but the high price tags are not. What’s a poor nerd to do? Buy a second display and connect it to your Mac. It’s one of the easiest ways to trick out your Mac! Working with multiple monitors gives you more visual real estate. You’ll really notice the difference when working on documents in multiple applications, and you’ll have an advantage when playing certain games.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/stupid-apple-remote-tricks/Mon, 19 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/stupid-apple-remote-tricks/If you’ve purchased a Mac recently, you probably have an Apple Remote. This nifty little device allows you to enter Apple’s Front Row interface and control your Mac from afar. It’s common knowledge that you can use your Apple Remote to play music, watch movies, and flip through pictures. This all comes in very handy, especially when you use your Mac as a full-blown entertainment center. What you might not know is that you can also use your remote to put your Mac to sleep, present a Keynote presentation, and lock your Mac.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/great-moments-in-teaching/Sat, 17 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/great-moments-in-teaching/The other day I was teaching my sophomore writing class the finer points of colon usage, so naturally I thought of Harold Welsh. But before I get to that, I should add that my students—unless they are too polite—never seem to notice the similarity, indeed the identity, of the colon as a mark of punctuation and the colon that constitutes the home stretch of the digestive tract. (In fact, I just looked it up and they actually are of two different etymologies, the former from the Greek word for “limb,” the latter from the Greek word (same spelling, but with an accent change) for “large intestine.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/make-an-encrypted-disk-image-to-secure-files/Fri, 16 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/make-an-encrypted-disk-image-to-secure-files/Encryption satisfies one of the most basic, fundamental human needs: The right to privacy. By using encryption, you can be reasonably confident that your files will be protected from prying eyes. This is especially important if you work on computers that are shared with others, or if you frequent high-traffic computing environments, such as computer labs. Fortunately, the ability to encrypt files using disk images is a free feature built into every Mac running Mac OS 10.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-make-a-favicon/Thu, 15 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-make-a-favicon/Have you ever noticed those little icons in the address bar of your web browser? They also appear next to your bookmarks, and sometimes next to the items in your RSS feeds. These favicons - or “favorites icons” - are more fun to look at than they are functional, but almost every website has one these days. Now, your website can have a favicon, too. It’s easy to make these little icons with your favorite graphics editor.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-resize-the-dock/Tue, 13 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-resize-the-dock/The Dock is an application launcher that normally resides at the bottom of your desktop. Most of us know and love this integral part of Mac OS X, but sometimes the Dock gets in the way. Fortunately, resizing or hiding the Dock is easy. We’ll show you how to do it. This is the Dock. A black triangle under an icon indicates that the program is running: The Dock contains shortcuts to programs - you can even add your favorite applications and remove the ones you don’t use.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-transfer-music-from-an-ipod-to-your-mac/Tue, 13 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-transfer-music-from-an-ipod-to-your-mac/The iPod is probably the best portable music player the world has ever seen. It’s simple to use, easy to operate, and instantly updatable. Never before has it been so easy to purchase, store, and transport thousands of songs. It’s easy to take this beautiful and reliable device for granted! But the iPod isn’t perfect. One of our pet peeves is the inability to transfer an iPod’s music to a computer.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/roll-your-own-mac-app/Mon, 12 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/roll-your-own-mac-app/Have you ever wondered how Mac applications are made? Then you’ve come to the right place! This article was written for anyone wanting to get into Mac programming or interface design. We’ll be discussing Cocoa, Apple’s native object-oriented application programming environment for Mac OS X, which is (for the true nerds out there) one of the five major APIs available for Mac OS X. We’ll be using Xcode for all of this.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/jemez-half/Sat, 10 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/jemez-half/I found that other essay, Dear Readers, and I count on your indulgence in letting me run it, for surely you do not want to leave me in ignominy at the hands—or rather the feet—of Ed Green, my nemesis from Devil’s Throne. -Shea The Jemez Pueblo Half-Marathon is one of the prettiest footraces in the Southwest, a circuit starting and ending in the village itself, running out through the corn and chile and bean fields, and skirting the red buttes, all under an ice-blue New Mexico sky.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-create-a-desktop-slideshow/Thu, 08 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-create-a-desktop-slideshow/If you’re like us, you love browsing and collecting nice desktop pictures. There are literally thousands of websites that provide free desktop pictures. Anybody can download one of these works of art and set it as their desktop. And, if you have a digital camera and use iPhoto, you can set one of your own photos as your desktop picture. The problem is that you only have one desktop, and having one desktop means you can only display one desktop picture at a time.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-comic-life-in-the-classroom/Wed, 07 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-comic-life-in-the-classroom/There’s a long history of comics in the classroom, and the list of references at the end of this article is a great starting point for learning about this concept. While there’s still resistance to this medium being used in education - whether by staff or students - there is also a growing movement to use every valuable tool available. Comics have some great uses in the classroom and in a variety of curricula.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-write-your-first-applescript/Wed, 07 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-write-your-first-applescript/Apple describes AppleScript as “an English-like language used to write script files that automate the actions of the computer and the applications that run on it.” I’d add that AppleScript is the easiest scripting language to learn, because it’s so similar to English and it’s very easy to understand. Script Editor - The Scripting Application To write AppleScripts, you need Script Editor, an application included with Mac OS X (located in /Applications/AppleScript/).https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/software-piracy-black-beard-and-captain-kidd/Wed, 07 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/software-piracy-black-beard-and-captain-kidd/In keeping with a recent article about piracy in the Runtime Revolution Newsletter, I’ve chosen to reprint an article I wrote in 2000 for the original Macinstruct website. It is still quite relevant and on target. Last week’s Code Mojo article presented me with significant issues - more than I had originally thought - but I will be back next week reviewing some of the scripting that was done in the Coloring Book application.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/mac-backup-basics/Mon, 05 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/mac-backup-basics/It was years ago, but I still remember it. It started out as one of those odd little crashes. A completely empty dialog box appears and then everything freezes. Okay. It happens. The keyboard is frozen as well, so I reach down and cycle the power button on the CPU. The friendly thrum of the startup chime comes from the speakers and a few moments later, the flashing question mark of the mystery disk icon appears at the center of the otherwise empty screen.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/devils-throne/Sat, 03 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/devils-throne/Dear Readers, An oldie for you this weekend. But I hope you’ll also take it as a goodie. Enjoy. - Shea The thing about Devil’s Throne is, you can’t keep hold of the truth, from one year to the next, of just how tough it is. Oh, you always have a good picture of that absurd hill in your mind and you remember the dozens who don’t make it to the top without breaking into a walk.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/textwrangler-the-best-free-text-editor/Thu, 01 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/textwrangler-the-best-free-text-editor/I don’t care what Justin Long and John Hodgman say in the Get a Mac commercials. The best thing about Macs is all of the quality freeware and shareware software. Sure, Mac users often take this software for granted, but if you really use PCs - and I mean really use them, not just play around with them at BestBuy - you’ll quickly find yourself missing the third-party Mac applications.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-rss/Wed, 28 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-use-rss/Just as the internet revolutionized communications in the early ’90s, RSS is fundamentally changing the way we receive information. Years ago, before RSS came into its own, we visited websites that published news, posted links, and provided information. We bookmarked our favorite websites and checked them frequently, because there wasn’t any other way to tell when they were updated. No longer. Thanks to RSS - which stands for Really Simple Syndication - we can receive everything from news and blogs to podcasts and iPhoto pictures without even opening our web browser.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/rolling-a-revolution-application/Tue, 27 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/rolling-a-revolution-application/We left off last week with having pretty much completed a completely new Revolution stack, named the “San Diego Activities and Coloring Book.” There were still a number of issues and more than a few scripting challenges to be resolved. I had assumed, somewhat naively, that the balance of the scripts would not be a great deal different than their HyperCard counterparts. As I dug in to completing them, I found that was not exactly to be the case.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-make-mac-icons/Mon, 26 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-make-mac-icons/A few weeks ago, Matt Cone showed us how Macinstruct’s beautiful icons, courtesy of the talented Gary Gehiere, came to be. In that article, you were shown the beginning stages of icon design – how the meaning of an idea is distilled down to a few carefully placed pixels. The end result, of course, is seen here - on Macinstruct - in the icons scattered throughout the website. But what about the development stage?https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/i-see-by-my-outfit/Sat, 24 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/i-see-by-my-outfit/“Clothes,” they say, “make the man.” But that is just the start of what they say. The more you think about clothes, the more fascinating the subject becomes. And before I go any further, I would like to acknowledge and recommend a good book on the subject, Alison Lurie’s The Language of Clothes (which is probably out of print, alas, so you will have to scrounge for it). Lurie builds an extended metaphor around the idea that clothes are actually a language, which is an idea that we can, I think, readily agree with: what you wear “speaks volumes” about you.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/airport-card-alternatives-surfing-wirelessly-on-the-cheap/Fri, 23 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/airport-card-alternatives-surfing-wirelessly-on-the-cheap/When I won the eBay auction for my PowerMac G4, I was thrilled to discover that my “new” Mac came with an AirPort card. For those who don’t know, an AirPort card allows you to wirelessly connect to the Internet and other networks. Since my PC downstairs was already connected to the Internet through an ISP, all I had to do to get wireless Internet access was purchase a wireless router for the downstairs computer, and I was on my way!https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/creating-a-new-cross-platform-application-in-revolution/Wed, 21 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/creating-a-new-cross-platform-application-in-revolution/When I first started thinking about this Chapter, I lost focus and started thinking about knowing all there is to know about Revolution. That was naive, and pretty stupid of me. I had exposed myself to a little bit of the vastness of Revolution and started thinking in grander terms than my original conception, which was to provide the old HyperCard crowd a really good excuse to shift their long-standing HC devotion to Revolution by demonstrating that Revolution can be a fairly simple extension to their HyperCard addiction.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/district-spotlight-jordan-school-district/Wed, 21 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/district-spotlight-jordan-school-district/Jordan School District (JSD) is the largest school district in the state of Utah. JSD currently serves over 80,000 students in 10 cities and other unincorporated areas. If you were to look at a map of the Salt Lake Valley and divide it into thirds going north to south, JSD would cover the southern third of the valley from the Wasatch Mountains on the east to the Oquirrh Mountains on the west.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-display-the-date-in-the-menu-bar/Tue, 20 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-display-the-date-in-the-menu-bar/When getting settled into my new MacBook, it quickly became apparent that I did not want to rely on the calendar widget to find the numeric date. I simply wanted to view the date alongside the time in the menu-bar. Unfortunately, this is not an option in the Mac OS X operating system. However, by making some minor modifications, you too can easily display the date in the Mac OS X menu-bar without additional applications.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-fix-a-dead-pixel/Mon, 19 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-fix-a-dead-pixel/There comes a time in the life of every computer where one of the pixels on that beautiful LCD screen decides to not “play along” with the others. Usually it does one of two things: It stays one color and refuses to change (Stuck Pixel). It goes to sleep (Dead Pixel). There is always a slight chance that the pixel is dead for good. But 90% of the time it can be fixed.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/hired-gun/Sat, 17 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/hired-gun/Were I to sidle up and whisper “grammar teacher” in your shell-like ear, I bet I know what your gut reaction (beyond screaming “PERVERT!”) would be. Grammar teacher. Not just pursed lips but a pursed face and probably a pursed soul. Stunted aspirations and reptilian mien and metabolism. Gleeful tormentor of schoolchildren. I know these things as well as the rest of you because I was once one of those schoolchildren.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-clean-your-mac-on-the-cheap/Thu, 15 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-clean-your-mac-on-the-cheap/I’ll admit it: I’m not a neat freak. And the fact that my gear is in an attic where dust likes to accumulate doesn’t help the situation. The dust accumulates in the strangest of places, and one of those places is near my computers. So every now and then I’ll open up the Mac and do a little bit of cleaning here and there. I don’t stop there, however. Other surfaces and peripherals also get the cleaning treatment.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/converting-hypercard-stacks-to-standalone-apps-using-revolution/Wed, 14 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/converting-hypercard-stacks-to-standalone-apps-using-revolution/First of all, I want to say that my recent voyages into the land of Revolution have started taking their toll on me. Something that I, simplistically, had thought I was “up to” as a challenge in teaching has started to become far more. I’m not giving up; I just need to set the record straight: I’m a beginner, just like many of you who are reading my offerings, and my tenet “the best way to learn is by teaching” still remains in place.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/unified-communications-in-education/Wed, 14 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/unified-communications-in-education/One Box to rule them all, One Box to find them, One Box to bring them all and in the network bind them. Unified Communications (UC) is most definitely becoming, if it hasn’t already become, the buzzword of networking companies talking about an organization’s next step in communication systems. There are few, if any, major networking companies—or even small and medium ones—that are not creating, marketing, selling, re-selling, or implementing unified communications systems.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/an-absolute-beginners-guide-to-the-terminal/Mon, 12 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/an-absolute-beginners-guide-to-the-terminal/Sitting discreetly in Utilities folder (nestled nearly unnoticed amid your applications) is one of the most powerful tools ever created for the Mac. It is simple and elegant, yet can be intimidating (if not terrifying) and has the power to cure some of your computer’s most puzzling ills. It also possesses the fearsome ability to wreak unimaginable havoc on your system. We are talking, of course, about the Terminal, that magnificent gateway to the hidden underpinnings of the Mac OS.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/kairos-ii-the-end-of-time/Sun, 11 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/kairos-ii-the-end-of-time/Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand In the moon that is always rising. Nor that riding to sleep I should hear him fly with the high fields And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land. Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-print-borderless-photos-with-iphoto/Fri, 09 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-print-borderless-photos-with-iphoto/We use iPhoto for our digital photos. (Who doesn’t?) For this tutorial, we wanted to perform two iPhoto tasks: print 8.5x11 photos, and crop a portrait photo from a landscape original. We used iPhoto ‘06 on Mac OS 10.4, with a Hewlett-Packard 7960 Photosmart printer. Differences in printers and in the iPhoto and OS versions should not make for too dissimilar of a process, provided the OS is in the 10.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/podcasts-in-education/Wed, 07 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/podcasts-in-education/Although the concept of streaming media has been around almost as long as the Internet itself, and Podcasts specifically since 2000, the use of Podcasts in education has recently experienced a growth spurt around the world. Education is not generally known for its quick adoption of new technologies. There are still districts that don’t have a presence on the Internet, although I would be surprised to find some that don’t communicate electronically.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/convert-a-hypercard-stack-to-revolution/Tue, 06 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/convert-a-hypercard-stack-to-revolution/I had every intention of responding to readers’ comments about my last column on Revolution, and I’m going to do just that; but we’re also going to start with some serious Revolution activity after I make a few corrections to my previous offerings. Thanks to several of the RevList members, it was brought to my attention that I made a couple of erroneous observations and remarks. Should you go back to reread my previous articles, you will notice that I will have changed them a little to reflect the things that I am about to reveal - though not immediately!https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-create-slideshows-using-idvd/Mon, 05 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-create-slideshows-using-idvd/Do you want to show off your photos on something besides your Mac? Then you need to create a slideshow and burn it to a DVD! You’ll be able to play your slideshow on any DVD player. Why do we use iDVD instead of iPhoto to do this? We tried creating slideshows using iPhoto with our 800MHz G4 iBook (1 GB of RAM and a SuperDrive), and with a 1.5 GHz G4 desktop.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/a-behind-the-scenes-look-at-mac-icon-design/Sun, 04 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/a-behind-the-scenes-look-at-mac-icon-design/Several months ago, Macinstruct decided to commission a set of custom-designed icons for its new website. We had no idea what we were doing. After researching the heck out of icon designers and emailing more than a dozen of them, we found somebody we liked who managed to create the beautiful icons you see today on Macinstruct. This article is a crooked chronicle of our experience. What the @#$%?! Why Mac Icons on a Website?https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/kairos-i/Sat, 03 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/kairos-i/Last week I said that there were no time-outs until the final one. Perhaps I was a tad hasty. A few years ago I underwent my first and—I hope—only major surgery. I expected to be put under the way we see it on TV, with me lying there on the operating table, a plastic mask over my nose and mouth and a nurse saying, “Now just relax and breathe normally.” Off I would slowly drift to dreamland.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-macs-on-ebay/Thu, 01 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-find-macs-on-ebay/If you’re in the market for a specific part for your Apple computer, you probably know that Apple charges retail prices for their products. Third-party resellers often charge the same amount for these products, or even a little more if they’ve marked up the price. So, sometimes the best place to look for Apple parts is eBay. Where do we start? Let’s try searching for baseball cards first, just as an example.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/effective-technical-writing/Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/effective-technical-writing/ Tip: This article was originally submitted to coach tutorial contest contestants. We liked it so much that we’ve left it online – hopefully it will help other writers. Greetings, writerly ones! I’ve been asked to offer you some sage advice, but since holiday preparations have left me rather short on thyme, I’ll settle for these recommendations for effective technical writing. First, and most important, write directly to your reader, and write in the active voice.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/internet-safety-for-families/Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/internet-safety-for-families/School districts across the United States provide Internet access for students and staff through their district networks. The purpose of this access is to provide an additional resource for the educational environment and meet the needs of an increasingly dynamic instructional model. Technology in general, and the Internet specifically, is just a tool. It is inherently neither good nor bad - it just is, until it’s used. Like many new advances in our society, the Internet has brought out the best and the worst in humanity.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/what-can-be-done-using-revolution/Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/what-can-be-done-using-revolution/Since this column is going to be an evaluation and, hopefully, a guide to using Revolution to assist you in solving your problems, the very first thing we need to do is cover some of the most important general programming tenets. When an idea for resolving a problem or issue that we encounter in everyday life occurs to us, our first hurdle is to come up with a method of “doing it” with our computer.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/a-guide-to-great-mac-books/Mon, 29 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/a-guide-to-great-mac-books/We’re not going to do any conjecturing as to why, but it seems like some of the best computer books you can buy are written about the Mac. We’d like to think that the platform simply attracts the most talented and creative writers. Here’s a brief guide to some of the Mac’s most popular authors and publishers. Not Really For Dummies You may not see these books displayed prominently on your local computer guru’s bookshelf, but we bet if you look closely you’ll find a few.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/taking-great-screenshots-in-mac-os-x/Sun, 28 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/taking-great-screenshots-in-mac-os-x/ Tip: This article was originally submitted to coach tutorial contest contestants. We liked it so much that we’ve left it online – hopefully it will help other writers. While most people, when they think about writing tutorials, focus on the actual writing—the words, sentences, paragraphs and overall structure—the graphics and screenshots you use in tutorials are just as important. While the old saw which says that, “a picture is worth a thousand words” may be an exaggeration, screenshots in technical documentation can not only give users more information than words may provide, but they may also be much more efficient.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/winged-chariot/Sat, 27 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/winged-chariot/Ok, so last week I left you with a teaser about chronos and kairos, the two faces of time. Well, I should know better: I would be very severe with a student who proposed a five hundred word essay on “time” (“Sure that’s big enough for five hundred words, Sparky?”). The topic has turned into a writhing kudzu and just escaping with my life will be the best I deserve. This week chronos, then; next week, or some week, kairos.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/shopping-for-macs-at-thrift-stores/Thu, 25 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/shopping-for-macs-at-thrift-stores/If you’re like me and don’t feel the need to have the latest-and-greatest Mac equipment, the best thing you can do for your Mac and your wallet is shop at thrift stores. It’s a crap shoot, but on a good day you may walk out with more than you expected. There are a variety of stores to select from, including the Salvation Army, The Goodwill, American Thrift Centers, and my personal favorite: The Red, White and Blue thrift store.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/district-spotlight-farmington-municipal-schools/Wed, 24 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/district-spotlight-farmington-municipal-schools/We’ll occasionally reference school districts in our articles to illustrate concepts or identify how technology can be implemented, and it will be helpful if some general information about the districts is available. We’ll call these articles ‘Spotlights’. Public school districts in the United States vary greatly in many aspects. The size (in students and geographical distances), available funding, socioeconomic factors of the community, internal leadership, and age of a school district are all important ingredients in how technology is implemented.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-write-tech-stuff-really-good/Tue, 23 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-write-tech-stuff-really-good/ Tip: This article was originally submitted to coach tutorial contest contestants. We liked it so much that we’ve left it online – hopefully it will help other writers. Be active. This is passive: In case of emergency, the red button should be pressed. This is active: In case of emergency, hit the red button. Passive is good only when you don’t want to hold anyone responsible: There was a red button pressed this morning.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/why-would-ordinary-people-want-to-program/Tue, 23 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/why-would-ordinary-people-want-to-program/Last week’s article was supposed to have been labeled a “Prelude”; hence this one is the real introduction, but first a short note about the responses I received from the first article. The responses were not numerous, although the ones I did receive were very enlightening and probably represent a cross section of the nearly 1,800 readers who did take the time on the first day it was posted to look at what I had to say about Revolution and what is planned down the road.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/introduction-to-the-os-x-terminal-application/Mon, 22 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/introduction-to-the-os-x-terminal-application/The Terminal is an application from Apple used to gain access to the power that is “under the hood” of the operating system. Historically, there have been two ways to access the operating system; a Graphical User Interface (GUI) shell, or a command-line shell. The Mac OS graphical interface allows us to do our daily computing tasks in a manner that is familiar to us – if we want to throw an item away, we drag it to the trash.https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/me-myself-and-i/Sat, 20 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/weekend-wonk/me-myself-and-i/Hi. Shea here. I am going to risk a rather prosaic opening (but to what will be, after all, an enterprise of prose, so at least there is an odd appropriateness to it). Matt Cone has invited me—he bought me lunch to clinch it!—to write an occasional column for Macinstruct. Needless to say I was flattered and, flattery going a long way with me, here I sit—at my Mac, of course—about to introduce myself, explain myself, perhaps even proleptically defend myself.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/finding-mac-freeware-and-shareware-a-beginners-guide/Thu, 18 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/finding-mac-freeware-and-shareware-a-beginners-guide/Why would anyone need low-cost software? I’m sure that some people, after switching from the PC, realize that they need some software to put on their shiny new Mac and their pockets are now empty. Or how about students, who, after spending their last bit of pocket change on some yummy ramen noodles, don’t exactly have a few hundred dollars left for a graphic-editing application. Then you have people like me.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/why-use-technology-in-education/Wed, 17 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/why-use-technology-in-education/If you’re a regular visitor to this website, you may not need to read any supporting arguments for the use of technology in your educational system. However, it is beneficial to begin any discussion with a solid foundation in the topic to be presented. Why students should be using technology in their education can be a complex issue, and there are many small points to be made here about the value of learning, understanding and using technology.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/introducing-revolution-the-new-hypercard/Tue, 16 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/introducing-revolution-the-new-hypercard/First a little nostalgia. Back several years ago, prior to the emergence of OS X, there was a widely used, widely popular and widely supported Apple program called HyperCard. It made its appearance in the late ’80s and I was one of its biggest advocates. For several years, though a licensed architect, I made my living creating HyperCard stacks of a highly sophisticated nature. This was in the era of the Mac SE30 with its dinky little black and white 9-inch screen, and a 16 MHz processor without a built-in hard drive.https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/mac-advocacy-in-a-windows-world/Sun, 14 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/mac-advocacy-in-a-windows-world/This article is not a Windows Platform bashing arena. Nor is it an elitist meeting area to puff each other up and reassure one another. If you want affirmation, find a counseling group. This is a venue to examine how people do what they do on a daily basis. To have people think about how they accomplish their objectives and to lend insight to how they can do these tasks better and, dare I say, enjoy them.