Tutorials
Making the Most of Time Machine
Wayne Linder December 6, 2007
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.
How to Change Your Mac's Icons
Matt Cone November 30, 2007
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.
7 Little Leopard Niceties
Matt Cone November 27, 2007
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?
Mac Your Xbox 360
Stephen Korecky October 31, 2007
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.
Say hello to Mac OS X Leopard
Wayne Linder October 25, 2007
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.
Speed Up Your Sluggish Mac
Stephen Korecky October 15, 2007
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.
Make a Mac Web Server with MAMP and Wordpress
Janet Fouts October 15, 2007
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.
How to Get Rid of Favorite Styles in TextEdit
Matt Cone October 5, 2007
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.
Import MiniDV Tapes with Broken Timecodes
Dave Strom October 2, 2007
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.
Bringing the Best of Windows to Mac OS X
Arbi Karamians September 19, 2007
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.