How-tos Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Audio workarounds in iMovie for iOS

by Steven Sande (Jan 17th, 2012)

While iMovie for iOS is a technological tour-de-force that somehow crams a complete video editor into the limited real estate of an iOS app, it does have its Achilles Heel -- a less-than-stellar ability to work with audio. Macworld author, TidBits ...

TUAW Help Line: holiday gift questions & answers

by Michael Rose (Dec 25th, 2011)

The goose is cooked, the cookies crumbled, the wrapping paper thrown away and the relatives released to their neutral corners. Finally, you can get down to the post-holiday fun of setting up your new iPad, or transferring your data from your old ...

Mac 101: Encode media from Automator or the command line in Lion

by Kelly Hodgkins (Nov 22nd, 2011)

There's an easy way in OS X 10.7 Lion to convert video or audio from one format to another, using a fixed suite of conversion settings. One approach uses Automator and can be launched from the Finder. The other uses the Terminal application and ...

Holiday Gift Guide: Buying an iPad

by Steven Sande (Nov 18th, 2011)

Whether it's a gift for yourself, a friend, or a loved one, buying your first iPad can be cause for some trepidation. After all, there are a number of combinations of three variables -- network type, carrier, and storage on the device -- that ...

Split large movie files quickly on 10.6 with QuickTime Player 7

by Michael Rose (Nov 15th, 2011)

Updated to clarify that a split clip feature exists in 10.7's version of QuickTime X. Say what you will about the QuickTime X framework and player introduced in Mac OS X 10.6 -- it's crazy speedy on multicore machines, it provides the foundation ...

Download Amazon MP3s in Terminal with clamz

by TJ Luoma (Nov 13th, 2011)

If you've ever wanted to download Amazon MP3s via Terminal or over ssh, or ever found yourself unable to use the "Amazon MP3 Downloader.app" then I have good news for you: there is another way. The problem Amazon's MP3 Store annoys me to no ...

Mac 101: Use web clippings to put a Mickey Mouse clock on your Mac

by Megan Lavey-Heaton (Nov 8th, 2011)

Dashboard has several fantastic features, including the ability to turn any web clipping into a widget. Macworld readers decided to use this feature to grab the functioning Mickey Mouse clock from the iPod nano home page and use it on your ...

Blogging with your voice: Siri, Blogger, and post-by-SMS

by Erica Sadun (Oct 21st, 2011)

As I mentioned on my earlier post, Steve Sande and I have been hard at work collaborating on "Talking to Siri," an ebook that will soon hit the Kindle store. One of the topics we're exploring is how to push Siri beyond its advertised ...

iPhone 101: Disable Siri with iPhone passcode to prevent unauthorized use

by Steven Sande (Oct 20th, 2011)

Welcome to iPhone 101, the series that explains the basics of iPhone operation. This time, it's making sure Siri doesn't let anyone use your locked iPhone. Almost immediately after the release of the iPhone 4S, TUAW started receiving emails from ...

Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me dual tune

by Erica Sadun (Oct 10th, 2011)

Dear Aunt TUAW, What the heck is going on with eyeTV why after 3-4 years of promises do they still not support dual tuners, or channel sorting? i've tried to reach out to elgato in various different digital ways, but to no avail, does TUAW ...

How to check if you're eligible for an iPhone upgrade

by Steven Sande (Sep 28th, 2011)

With a new iPhone or two just around the corner, TUAW has been getting the usual flood of "how can I check to see if I'm eligible for an upgrade" emails. At least for those of us in the US on either the AT&T or Verizon networks, that's a ...

Emulate Lion's Versions in Microsoft Word

by TJ Luoma (Sep 25th, 2011)

Microsoft Word does not support Lion's "Versions" feature yet, but there's no reason to panic. There are a few options that you can use to cobble together a work- around until the Mac BU team updates the Office suite. Also worth mentioning: ...

Mac 101: Creating a recovery disk using Recovery Disk Assistant

by Steven Sande (Aug 9th, 2011)

Lion's recovery partition is a wonderful idea, but doesn't really help out if your hard drive fails. That's why yesterday's announcement of the Recovery Disk Assistant from Apple was welcome news to a lot of people who were trying to figure out ...

Sharing Instagram photos on Google+ automatically

by Steven Sande (Jul 14th, 2011)

Instagram (free) is a lot of fun, although it's often criticized as being the "auto-tune for photography." Google+ is the new social networking flavor of the week, so it's natural that the two services should get together. Wired's Gadget Lab has ...

Make a backup copy of the MacBook Air USB Software Reinstall Drive

by TJ Luoma (Jul 14th, 2011)

Since it doesn't come with an optical drive, giving MacBook Air buyers a DVD of the operating system wouldn't be very helpful. That's why Apple's lightest laptop comes with the USB Software Reinstall Drive -- a very small white USB drive. Sometimes ...

How to make sure you're charging your iPad correctly

by Matt Tinsley (Jul 8th, 2011)

Recently I noticed that my iPad was not charging as quickly as it used to. Only a month or so ago I was impressed at how my iPad's battery would easily charge up to the 80% range in a couple short hours, but more recently the same charge time ...