Nobody likes spam, but if you use Apple's Mail on Mountain Lion, at least you have some tools to deal with it.

Plenty of Mac users rely on Mail to read, manage and process their emails... and spam messages. If you use email, you have spam -- that's just the way it works. Following up on Kelly's how-to from a few months back, let's take a look at some ways to manage spam efficiently and decrease your email processing time.

Built-in Spam Filtering

Mail's built-in spam filtering is enabled by default. You'll find it in the Junk Mail setting in Preferences. Make sure that the box labeled "Enable junk mail filtering" is selected. You can also determine where spam messages go after detection, or add exemptions to your filter.

[Note that some online mail services -- Gmail in particular -- recommend disabling Mail's onboard spam filtering. Be sure to check the setup instructions for your service provider. --Ed.]

In the Viewing preferences tab, disable "Display remote images in HTML messages." Some spammers send out messages with web bugs -- invisible images linked to the specific message you received -- that notify the spammer that your email is an active email account once you click on the message. From the spammer's perspective, this "validates" you as a real, live address, which then generates more spam for you. Not good. Turning off this feature prevents the spammer from recognizing your email as an active email account.

Creating Rules

Mail lets you create rules to fine-tune your spam filtering. One helpful method is to create a new mailbox for messages that meet your spam criteria. Once your new mailbox is created and properly labeled (i.e., "Spam-ish"), go to the Rules setting under Preferences and create specific actions based on a predetermined set of criteria. For example:

If all the Content-Type Contains 'multipart/related' then Move Message to [the mailbox you just created].

Now that you've set that rule, messages that meet your criteria are moved to that mailbox.

Fine-Tuning

No spam filter is completely foolproof, so you will get false positives and false negatives. Mail allows you to select a message and click on "Not Junk" or "Load Image" which will correct the labeling of the message. The more times you correct these errors, the better Mail gets at reducing them. A good rule of thumb is to review your Junk Mail folder periodically to make sure valid messages haven't slipped through the cracks.

Cloud Mail

If you're not using Mail on your Mac, you still have options in the cloud. An iCloud or Gmail account can act as a buffer between malicious spam and your computer. In some cases, the cloud service filters may be a bit too aggressive; if you suspect some of your inbound mail is being blocked incorrectly, be sure to check the support page for your provider and test with another account.

Third-Party Spam Utilities

Several third-party spam utilities are available to further enhance your spam-squashing powers, including SpamSieve from C-Command Software. It's been around for quite a while and works very well. A single license will cost you US$30; a free trial is also available.

SaneBox is an online application which helps to sort your email into proper boxes and reduces your email processing time. An added feature is that it runs through spam amazingly well. The Smart filtering feature of SaneBox reads your email messages, determines the level of importance and moves unimportant messages out of the inbox.

The @SaneBlackHole will not only delete your spam messages but makes sure you never receive email from the sender again and automatically unsubscribes you from the mailing list. You can also defer processing your email by placing your email in the "@SaneTomorrow" or "@SaneNextWeek" folder and it will automatically pop back into your inbox when the time comes. The cost for SaneBox is US$5/month but if you refer other people you'll receive extra credits.

The free Mailstrom.co service also can help you reduce spam along with unwanted subscriptions, newsletters and so forth. Mailstrom groups your email by big-picture criteria (sender, subject, size, etc.) and lets you archive or delete in bulk with a single click. For catalog emails or newsletters, you can also unsubscribe in only a few steps, rather than having to track down and confirm individual unsubscribe requests.

By using these techniques, hopefully the only place you will see spam is in your musubi.

Mac 101: Beef up your spam filters in Mail (video) originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 16 Apr 2013 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mac 101: Beef up your spam filters in Mail (video) originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 16 Apr 2013 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice Mac users.

Every newly purchased Mac comes with a one-year limited warranty and 90 days of complimentary telephone technical support from Apple. Of course, by purchasing AppleCare with your new Mac, you can extend this warranty and telephone technical support to three years, but it will cost you extra.

How do you find out if your Mac is still in its first year of warranty or covered by AppleCare for an additional two years? Simple! Go to Apple's Service and Support Coverage page and enter your Mac's serial number. You'll get a break down of your warranty based on the date your Mac was purchased. Where do you find your Mac's serial number? You'll find it in About This Mac (here's how).

Or for an even easier way -- because remembering and grabbing your Mac's serial number can be a bother -- download WozWas's Mac Warranty Status Script, which grabs your Mac's serial number and enters it into Apple's Service and Support Coverage page for you. All with one simple click.

Knowing whether your Mac is in warranty can be really helpful, should something go wrong. It's also particularly useful to know the status of a Mac's warranty if you're planning on buying second-hand. Remember, warranty and AppleCare coverage stays with a Mac until it expires.

There are different views on whether AppleCare is worth the cost, but regardless, a general rule of thumb is that if you can afford it, you should get it. Though Macs are great, if / when something goes wrong, it can be expensive to repair. AppleCare provides you with peace of mind and first-rate support from Apple.

Mac 101: Checking your Mac's warranty status originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 15 Apr 2013 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mac 101: Checking your Mac's warranty status originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 15 Apr 2013 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Google is sunsetting its Reader service in July and you may be on the hunt for a new RSS service and client to use. Before you fire up that new client, you should take a few minutes to backup your current Google Reader feeds as you may need to import them into your new app. Importing your feeds will be a lot faster than manually re-subscribing to each one. It's also a good idea to have a copy stored locally as a backup.

Here's what you need to do to pull your feeds down from Google Reader:

1. Login to your Google Reader account and click on the gear on the right-hand side of your web browser. Select "Reader Settings" from the drop-down menu.

2. Click on the Import/Export tab in the Google Settings page. Here you will find a link to "Download your data through Takeout."

3. Click on the link to "Download your data through Takeout" and you will be brought to Google's Takeout service. Login again to your Google account, if needed.

4. Make sure the "Choose Services" button at the top of Takeout is selected and Google Reader is noted in the box on the center of the screen. Click on the "Create Archive" button at the bottom to create a backup of your Google Reader account.

5. You will then jump to the download screen where you will see the progress of your backup. My backup was small so it was already completed by the time the page opened. The files for your Google Reader account will be bundled into a zip file and can be downloaded to your computer.

6. Click on the download button to start transferring the Google Reader files to your computer. I use the default download settings in my browser, so my zip file was saved to the "Downloads" folder on my Mac.

Depending on your settings, your file may be saved to a different location. You may also be prompted to open the file with the archive utility or save it to your drive. I recommend saving the file directly to the drive. If you download the file and forget where it was saved, you can locate it by opening the "Downloads" window in your browser or clicking on the Downloads icon in your OS X Dock.

7. Locate the downloaded zip file on your Mac using Finder and double-click on it to extract the files to their own folder. The Reader folder will contain a handful of .json files and a subscriptions.xml file. You can ignore (but not delete) the .json files.

8. Open your new RSS client and use it to import the subscriptions.xml file that you just downloaded and extracted.

Mac 101: How to backup your Google Reader account originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mac 101: How to backup your Google Reader account originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice Mac users.

Let's say you've just got off the phone with a friend. You've arranged to meet later for coffee, but you don't want to forget, so you go to Calendar on your Mac to schedule the event. You double click the date you're going to meet, enter a title, like "Meet Martin for Coffee" and hit return. The event has been created, but all the details still need to be populated. So you double click the event again, to open it and enter further details, like time, location, etc. Or do you?

With the Calendar app in Mac OS X, you can schedule event details in the event title. The Calendar app will intuitively read those details and populate the appropriate sections. For example, let's say you're meeting Bob Jones for breakfast tomorrow at 8 AM at 23 Commercial Street. Simply enter "Breakfast with Bob 8 AM 23 Commercial Street" in the event title and Calendar will populate the time and location for you. Unfortunately, you can't schedule alert or note details like this, but this neat trick is really helpful for quick and snappy Calendar entries.

This tip works for most computerized calendars out there (including web-based ones like Google's Calendar), but I'm always surprised at just how many people don't know they can do it.

Mac 101: Schedule event details in the event title with Calendar originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 12 Feb 2013 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mac 101: Schedule event details in the event title with Calendar originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 12 Feb 2013 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice (and expert) Mac users.

Have you every tried to copy and paste text from a PDF into a word processor document like Pages or Microsoft Word? Most of the time the text loses all its formatting from the PDF, which can be a real pain.

Too often I've spent a frustrating amount of time putting text back into a coherent order after copying it from a PDF, while wondering why there isn't a simpler way of doing this on my Mac. Thankfully, a friend (who discovered how to from MacWorld) showed me, using Automator. And provided the text in the PDF is formatted correctly (and you're not trying to extract text that is actually an image), it's foolproof as well as free!

Here's how. On your Mac, open Automator from Applications. Automator will ask you to select a type for your document. Select Workflow, then hit return. In the far-left column of Automator, click on Files and Folders. In the second column, select Ask for Finder Items and drag and drop it into the far-right space which reads "Drag actions or files here to build your workflow." This becomes your first action.

Now click on PDFs in the far-left column and select Extract PDF Text from the second column. Drag and drop Extract PDF Text into the space to the right, where you dragged Find Files and Folders. You'll now see that Automator has created a workflow or one action following another.

You're almost there. In the Extract PDF Text bubble of the workflow, select Rich Text instead of Plain Text (next to Output -- this will retain formatting like italics and bold) and choose where you want Automator to place your extracted text files from Save Output To.

To finish, simply title and save, but make sure you've save as an application and not a workflow. Now open your new Automator application and select the PDF you want to grab the text from. A new Rich Text document will be created. From there, simply open this document and copy and paste the text into your preferred word processor.

Mac 101: Use Automator to extract text from PDFs originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 11 Feb 2013 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mac 101: Use Automator to extract text from PDFs originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 11 Feb 2013 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

One gripe I hear a lot from OS X Mountain Lion users is that they sometimes get notifications bothering them at the most inopportune times. I know that when I'm working on TUAW TV Live, the last thing I want is something else to distract my attention when I'm already distracted by about 15 other open windows. Author and tip maven Saied Ghaffari was showing me one of his e-books the other day that included a very useful tip on how to temporarily shut off those annoying notifications in Mountain Lion.

To do this, simply press the Option key and click on the Notification Center icon at the far right end of the menu bar. The icon turns grey to indicate that those banners, sounds and alerts are not going to harsh your mellow.

When you're ready to start getting notifications again, do the Option-click on Notification Center dance again and the endless parade will continue.

Mac 101: Temporarily disabling Notification Center originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 08 Feb 2013 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mac 101: Temporarily disabling Notification Center originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 08 Feb 2013 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Avoid opening obvious spam emails

First and foremost, you should not open an email that you recognize as being spam. Sometimes, the act of opening an email will alert the sender that the email has been viewed by the recipient. If the spammer knows that he has a fresh set of eyes, he will send even more spam your way.

Enable junk mail filtering

The Mail client built into OS X Mountain Lion has a Junk Mail filtering option that you should enable, especially if you get a lot of spam. You can access the settings by opening Mail > Preferences > Junk Mail (icon) and selecting "Enable junk mail filtering." The default settings should capture most of your spam, but you can tweak the settings if you want more control over you junk mailbox.

If you enable the Junk Mail option, make sure you take the time to mark messages as junk mail. Every time you mark an email as junk, the entry is added to the junk mail database and the next message from this sender will be pushed into your junk mail folder. Over time, the amount of spam hitting your inbox will gradually drop.

Manage your junk mail folder

Apple's mail server is good at filtering spam, but it is not perfect. You can improve its filtering by marking inbox spam as junk. You can either Choose "Mark as Junk Mail" from the Action pop-up menu at the top of the window if you are using iCloud email in a web browser. You can also manually drag an email and drop it in the junk folder.

All email messages in the junk folder are flagged as spam and stay in this folder for 30 days. After 30 days, they are deleted. It's a good habit to remember to check this folder on a regular basis. Sometimes, important emails are accidentally identified as spam and routed to this folder. Select a message, then click the Not Junk button to move this and subsequent emails from that sender to your inbox.

Disable automatic image loading

Besides not opening suspicious emails, you should also disable automatic image loading in emails. I know that it's great to be able to view your cousin's cute cat pictures as soon as you click on an email, but some spammers will use this automatic image loading feature to determine whether an email account is active. You can turn off images in the OS X Mail app by selecting Mail > Preferences > Viewing (icon) and deselecting "Display remote images in HTML messages." Don't worry, this won't strip the images from your incoming emails. You will just have to manually choose to load the images instead.

Use an alias email address

Signing up for a new online service or joining a new online mailing list is another surefire way to get additional spam. To keep your primary iCloud email in pristine condition, you should use your primary account to email only your close friends and create an alias email account for all your online ventures.

Users are allowed to create three email aliases per iCloud account. To create an alias, you should open the web-based version of iCloud email by logging in to iCloud.com. Open iCloud email and click on the gear-shaped Action pop-up menu in the top-right corner of the window. Click on Accounts to open the account management console and then select "Add an Alias."

You will have to create a new iCloud email address that includes between three and 20 characters. You can also add in your full name, assign a label color and add a description like "online shopping" for this alias.

Once you create a alias, you can send and receive email from the account. You can also disable it when you don't want to use it for a while and turn it back on when you do. When an alias is disabled, all incoming email is returned to sender. You can also delete an alias, but deleting an alias is permanent. If you think you may use the alias again, you should simply turn it off.

Mac 101: dealing with iCloud email spam originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 31 Jan 2013 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mac 101: dealing with iCloud email spam originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 31 Jan 2013 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

One of the really neat things about OS X is that it's easy to sort your files in Finder. If you're downloading a lot of files, there are several ways to corral them by using the item arrangement (the button that looks like it has a lot of tiny boxes in it). Here's how to use it.:

Name: Sorts by name.

Kind: This tells you in generic terms the different types of files in your folder, such as PDF documents, images, etc.

Application: This will tell you what default application will open a specific file.

Date Last Opened, Date Added, Date Modified, Date Created: Does what it says on the tin. These options will sort your files according to when you last accessed them, added them to your system, modified or created them. Date Created is especially useful for when you remember when you started a project but not when you last worked on it, and Date Added is good for when you have to sort through a lot of downloads and you're looking for one you downloaded on a certain date.

Size: This will group your files into batches depending on file size. It's good for figuring out what files are taking up a lot of room on your hard drive, which is especially useful for the smaller-capacity MacBook Air.

Label: This sorts by color label. You can add and remove labels by right-clicking the files and selecting a color under labels.

Mac 101: Use Finder's item arrangement to sort your files originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 25 Jan 2013 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mac 101: Use Finder's item arrangement to sort your files originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 25 Jan 2013 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Let's say you're reading TUAW and you see that I've used the word "peripatetic" in a post. While some of you would know the meaning of the word, others might be doing a bit of head-scratching and fire up the Dictionary app on your Mac. If you have a MacBook with a multi-touch trackpad or a desktop Mac with a Magic Trackpad, and if you run OS X Mountain Lion on your Mac, you can easily look up words with a simple gesture.

In whatever you happen to be looking at on your Mac, simply use three fingers to tap on the word that's causing you confusion. The word is highlighted in yellow, and a small popup shows you dictionary, thesaurus and Wikipedia entries that pertain to it. Sadly, this doesn't work with the Magic Mouse...

It's a fast way to look up words without missing a beat, so give that perplexing word a triple-finger tap the next time you're flummoxed or befuddled.

Mac 101: Mountain Lion's Magic Trackpad triple-finger tap dictionary lookup originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 22 Jan 2013 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mac 101: Mountain Lion's Magic Trackpad triple-finger tap dictionary lookup originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 22 Jan 2013 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

One thing I love about OS X is that no matter how long I use it, I'm often surprised by something that I didn't expect to find. That was the situation last week when i was using Apple's Preview app in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion to resize an image, and found myself looking at a part of the image through a magnifying loupe.

The loupe moves wherever your cursor is, and provides a nice magnified view of whatever you happen to be pointing at. While images might appear a bit pixelated within the confines of the loupe, it's a perfect way to get a closeup view of details that you might otherwise miss.

I accidentally made the loupe appear when I was trying to press the "1" key on my keyboard and pressed the "grave accent / tilde" key instead. It's the key just above the tab key and just to the left of the "1" key on the US English keyboard. The loupe toggles on and off with each successive press of the key.

Sure, there's not much earthshaking about this feature, but it is both useful and fun to show off to friends who think that there's nothing new to find in OS X.

Mac 101: Preview's magnifying loupe originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 Jan 2013 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mac 101: Preview's magnifying loupe originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 Jan 2013 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Adding Facebook integration to the OS X Contacts application was not without controversy; many of us feared an onslaught of @facebook.com email addresses polluting our pristine data. Assuming you can get past that hurdle, however, you may be faced with another annoyance: duplicate birthdays all up in your Calendar. Here's why they're there, and how to clear them up.

The birthday listings that appear in OS X's Calendar app under the Birthdays calendar seem like ordinary events, the kind you should be able to edit and delete with impunity. Thing is, they aren't. The Calendar app is just putting a friendly face on the real source of the birthday information: your contact data. For every person in your Contacts app with a valid birthday bit of data, you'll see a corresponding Calendars item for that friend (or foe).

While you can manually enter birthdays for your contacts (or strip them all at once using the Birthday Remover iOS app, for the misanthropes), most of us don't have hundreds of birthdays already listed in our Contacts data (although if you ever imported your Facebook contacts via another method, you might have quite a few). Facebook profiles and birthdays, though? That's another kettle of friends. Many of your Facebook contacts probably have their birthdays in their profiles; certainly most of mine do.

One might think that turning on Facebook contact sync would simply match up the Facebook friends with people already in your contact listings, especially if those same-named folks happen to share a birthday. What are the odds? Sadly, it doesn't work that way; it's up to you to remove the duplicated data and match up the contacts to get things nice and clean. Short of turning off Facebook's contact sync in OS X, this is the most straightforward way to deal with it.

Important safety note: the procedure described below will remove birthday data from your local contacts. Please back up both your contacts and calendar data beforehand. If at some later date you turn off Facebook sync, or your friends leave Facebook altogether or stop sharing their birthdays, you will no longer see the dates in either your Contacts or Calendar views. For the majority of your Facebook friends, you may not care about this risk, but I do not recommend removing the birthdays of immediate family, spouses etc. Live with those dupes. It's better that way.

It's easy to see duplicated birthdays in Calendar; they show up at the top of the week view in the all-day events area. Here's my double record for the irrepressible Gedeon Maheux of the Iconfactory.

Double-clicking one of these gets me to the detail view for the birthday:

Note the lack of any editing options. That's because the real data lives over in Contacts, so I'll click the Open in Contacts hyperlink. Of course, since I have both a Facebook and a conventional contact for Ged, in my All Contacts list he shows up twice. That's deeply annoying -- and easy to fix. The trick is to select both contacts in the list, then choose Link Selected Cards (Cmd-shift-\) from the Card menu.

In the event that there's duplicates in the local contacts plus a third Facebook contact, I select all three (or more) and the menu item changes to "Merge and Link" as seen here.

Now that I'm dealing with a unified view of the two different flavors of the contact, I click the Edit button at the bottom of the contact detail. Here's the view of the two birthday listings -- one local, one Facebook. I can't delete the Facebook data; in fact, I can't suppress or hide any of the Facebook contact info without totally disabling Facebook contact sync. (This is annoying.) So my only good option is to actually remove my local record for Ged's birthday by clicking the delete button next to that line. Aggravating, but not as aggravating as double birthdays for everyone. So that's what I'll do.

Once the contacts are linked, it's possible I may still want to get to the individual instances to make adjustments or changes. Look at the bottom of the detail where it says Cards and two gray line items; those are actually clickable, not that you'd know it. Clicking one of them will bring up a sub-detail pane that shows only the info from that record.

Finally, if you truly want to avoid any notifications for all those birthdays, you can achieve that (while still seeing them in Calendar) by right-clicking the Birthdays calendar, choosing Get Info, and checking the Ignore Alerts box. Happy birthday to all!

Mac 101: Deduplicating your birthdays in the Facebook era originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 18 Dec 2012 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mac 101: Deduplicating your birthdays in the Facebook era originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 18 Dec 2012 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Is the new iTunes 11 interface making you a little hot under the collar? Reader response was so strong and so warm to our first iTunes 11 "where did it go?" post, we decided to follow it up with a handful of additional tips. Here are five things you might be looking for and struggling to find in the new iTunes 11 interface.

1. Where did those downloads go?

Like Safari, iTunes 11 has adopted the philosophy of "we won't show you the downloads window unless you're actually downloading something." You'll find the downloads activity indicator at the top-right of your window, to the right of the search field. A pulsing bar tells you iTunes is in the middle of downloading items.

Click the indicator to open the downloads window. Here, you'll discover the items currently downloading or waiting to start downloading.

2. Mini Player volume control

Frustrated with the mini player and its apparent lack of volume control? Don't be. You can use Command-up arrow and Command-down arrow to adjust the volume, or you can click the AirPlay button and adjust the master volume slider.

3. Genius

iTunes 11 now offers Genius playlist building from several places. Most easily, you can build a Genius playlist from the current-playing item by right-clicking the title bar at the top of the window.

Choose "Start Genius." Sadly, iTunes 11 doesn't provide any coherent feedback after you do so, but if you check the Up Next list (it looks like a three-item bullet list at the right side of the current-playing box), it tells you "Up Next: From Genius", so you know it "took."

Another way to begin a Genius playlist is from the track listings. Right-click any track, and again, choose Start Genius to begin.

4. Loop and randomize

In iTunes 11, loop and randomize have hopped up to the top current-playing box. Looping can be found to the left of the track scrubber, with randomize (that "x"-shaped thing) to its right. They work just like they used to in iTunes 10. They do not, however, appear when playing Genius mixes. So if they disappear? Clear the Genius list from the Up Next pop-up.

5. Restoring "missing" movies, TV shows, music

Apple, bless its oddly thoughtful little heart, now offers media streaming from the cloud. A little cloud icon indicates items stored off your computer at Apple's data centers.

What you might not realize is that iTunes 11 allows you to hide these items. So if you're looking for something in your library and it doesn't seem to be there, you may want to check the View menu. Choose Show XXX in the Cloud -- whether movies, music, TV shows, etc, and restore their listings to your iTunes 11 categories.

Note: Original headline changed.

iTunes 11 for the change-averse: Where did all that stuff go? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 07 Dec 2012 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

iTunes 11 for the change-averse: Where did all that stuff go? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 07 Dec 2012 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Once you memorize the patterns, keyboard shortcuts can be huge time savers. Some easy-to-remember keystrokes are available in Safari and give you quick access to your bookmarked URLs. In this Mac 101, we will show you how to organize your bookmarks bar and use the keyboard shortcuts to maximize your workflow.

Before you can start using these bookmark shortcuts, you need to spend some time organizing and tidying up your bookmarks bar. You will have to launch Safari, click on "Bookmarks" in the menu bar and then select "Show All Bookmarks." Alternatively, you can type control-option and B. You should see the bookmarks window as shown below.

Once Safari opens the bookmarks window, you can click on "Bookmarks Bar" on the left to view your available bookmarks and bookmark folders. Make sure you select "Bookmarks Bar" and not the "Bookmarks Menu," as these shortcuts only work with entries in the bookmarks bar. In general, you use the bookmarks bar for frequently used URLs and the bookmarks menu for seldom used ones.

You can remove, rename and reorganize all your bookmarks from this interface. Organizing your bookmarks bar is important as you need individual bookmarks that are not enclosed in folders for the keyboard shortcuts to work. You can move a bookmark in the bookmarks bar by dragging and dropping it into its spot. You should arrange the bookmarks in the order that you want to remember them. In the screenshot above, I placed TUAW at the top because I use that URL the most throughout the day.

When organizing your list, keep in mind that the shortcuts correspond to the order in which the bookmarks are organized. As shown below, TUAW is at the top and uses "1" in the shortcut, CNET is second and uses "2", and so on. Though you can have a bunch of bookmarks, only the first nine will work with the shortcuts.

Once your bookmarks are organized, you can use the simple keyboard shortcut of command-number to open the associated bookmark. In my example, command-1 opens TUAW, command-2 opens CNET, command-3 opens Apple and so on. You can have 9 bookmarks that are accessible by merely typing command-1 to command-9.

Mac 101: Safari bookmark shortcuts originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 12 Oct 2012 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mac 101: Safari bookmark shortcuts originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 12 Oct 2012 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Today, I am in the process of upgrading our iMac for another product, likely a MacBook Pro with external display this time. I am wrestling with the idea of putting the old iMac in my daughter's study area for use.

My question is this: Is there a way for me to select the websites that she 'can' access? This is different to using a 'net nanny' filter where I can choose sites to block. I wish to ideally, set up two user accounts for her. One account with access to all the educational information and learning sites only, with a second account (for outside of study hours) where she can web-cam with friends/family and other social or fun site access.

Can this be done somehow/somewhere? I'm OK if it requires purchase of separate (reasonably priced) software, but cannot locate a solution for this dilemma.

I, and my gorgeous daughter, would love a reply on this one!

Dear Adam:

Good news! Not only is this possible, but it is free and built right into Mac OS X. I'll walk you through the steps.

First, launch System Preferences.app either by going to the Apple menu or by finding the /Applications/ folder in Finder.

Open the "Users & Groups" preference pane and you'll see something like this:

Click that + button at the bottom left (make sure that the "padlock" icon is unlocked first.)

Now you will see a "New Account" window. Choose "Managed with Parental Controls" as shown here:

(Since I don't know your daughter, I chose a familiar "little sister" name for her.)

Once you click "Create User" that window will go away, and you will see one like this:

Click the button for "Open Parental Controls" as shown, and you will see

Select the radio button next to "Allow access to only these websites" and then use the "+" and "-" buttons to add or remove sites.

Mac OS X manages access to these sites by setting up a local proxy and sending all traffic through it, which means that the same restrictions are in place regardless of which app is used, even the Terminal. While I wouldn't assume that any system is foolproof, this should prevent any accidental viewing of undesirable websites.

You can manage other settings using the Parental Controls pane in System Preferences.app.

Apple has video tutorials on this an other subjects available at https://www.apple.com/findouthow/.

Mac 101: Restricting Web Access originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Sep 2012 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mac 101: Restricting Web Access originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Sep 2012 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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 PC to your new Mac! Unfortunately, the end of a long day of cooking, eating, drinking and merry-making might render your personal IT skills a bit less than optimal. Whatever shall we do?

We're here to help. Got a pressing Mac, iPhone, iPod or iPad setup question? Wondering how best to arrange your iTunes store accounts, chat with Siri or configure iCloud? Leave a comment here, hit us up on our Ask TUAW Twitter account, or swing by our Facebook or G+ pages. We may not be able to answer all the questions, but we'll help as much as we can.

TUAW Help Line: holiday gift questions & answers originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 25 Dec 2011 20:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAW Help Line: holiday gift questions & answers originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 25 Dec 2011 20:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

"Can I use your computer real quick?"

Depending on who asks you this question over the next week, reactions may range from nothing to frantic flailing toward your machine to see if you can make it do something that looks like it is unusable, getting you out of having to relinquish it to a family member with a checkered techno-past. Since you've already done the basics to protect your Mac, like set a screensaver password, what else can you do to family-proof your machine?

Luckily, a small bit of prep work can make this question easy to answer. All you have to do is whip up a guest account on your system. Guest accounts are perfect because logging in as a guest user limits the amount of damage that can be inflicted on your system to virtually nothing. Guest users can't change other user accounts or system settings and have no remote access. If you really want to ratchet things down, you can also use Parental Controls to limit the apps a guest account can use, or filter internet content.

While all of that is nice, one of the most important differences between a guest account and a regular account is files: Any files created or downloaded by a guest account are deleted on logout, so every time you log in as a guest user it always looks like nobody has ever logged in before.

If this sounds like the way to go for you, and you're running 10.5 or higher, here's how to create a guest account:

• Go to System Preferences and select Users and Groups (10.7) or Accounts (10.5 or 10.6).
• In that panel, click on the Guest User, and check "Allow guests to log in to this computer."

That's it! No really! All you have to do is determine whether you want to turn on Parental Controls or allow the guest account to connect to shared folders, and you're done. Now your Mac is ready for whatever your visitors can throw at it.

Mac 101: Create a guest account originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 22 Nov 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mac 101: Create a guest account originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 22 Nov 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Here is a Mac 101 tip for novice Mac users.

Running Pages in Mac OS X Lion means you never have to worry about saving a document, it just happens automatically. While this is wonderful, this new feature has caused me to scratch my head a few times while I acclimatise to this simple, but quite different way of saving documents.

In previous versions of Mac OS X, when working on a document, very often I would hit "Save as..." from the File menu to (double) check where I had saved my document or to rename my document as it went through various titles. The problem I've found with Versions and Auto Save in Lion (or where I've struggled to adjust!) is that once you've created and titled a document by saving it, you're left with "Save a Version," which means you can't locate where you've saved your document or rename the title of your document from within Pages.

Fortunately, there's an older feature of Mac OS X that helps you easily identify where you've saved your document. And I'm not talking about going to Finder or Spotlight to search for it. You can view the root path of your document right from within Pages. Simply hit and hold the Control key on your keyboard (or right-click on your mouse) and click on the title of your document at the top of the Pages window. This will bring up the root path of your document so you can easily see where you document is stored on your computer.

Note that you must aim carefully when clicking on the menu bar. If you're in an app that supports Versions, a click on the right-hand side will reveal the Versions menu, and that's not what we want in this instance. If you see the disclosure triangle appear beneath your cursor, move a few pixels to the left.

Mac 101: Locating the root path of a Pages document in Pages originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 16 Nov 2011 11:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mac 101: Locating the root path of a Pages document in Pages originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 16 Nov 2011 11:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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 for next-generation features, it lets you drag-and-drop to combine movie clips, all that good stuff.

The fact is, for sheer Swiss Army utility it can't (yet) hold a candle to the veteran QuickTime 7 Player with the QuickTime Pro upgrade. While you can use the v7 player on Snow Leopard and Lion, getting access to the Pro features still requires a $29.99 license code.

That's a shame, because it means many Mac users are missing out on most of the wonderful tricks QuickTime Player 7 can do to save you time and aggravation. Here's one example: splitting a long & large movie into segments for easier uploading or emailing. If you're running 10.7 Lion, you have access to QuickTime X's new Split Clip command; if you're running 10.6 as in the example below, you don't. (I'll tackle the step-by-step of getting Lion's version of QT X to do this in a subsequent post.)

In QuickTime X on 10.6, we've got a visual and very fast Trim tool; it shows exactly where the video will be truncated with an easy, iMovie-esque scrubber bar, and it does indeed save wicked fast once you trim your clip. Nice and handy.

While you can trim quickly this way, you can't actually split the file into two and match up frames so you don't lose anything in the middle (which you can do on 10.7). You'd have to go back, open the original movie, and try to figure out exactly where you trimmed it -- QuickTime X for 10.6 doesn't have a way to do this gracefully.

Oh, well. Good thing there's QuickTime Player 7 (in the Utilities folder, by default, on Snow Leopard) with a Pro license key. In this case, you just open the movie and use the selector tools (below the timeline) to highlight the first half of the movie that you want to save as a separate file.

Then, before you do anything else, go to File -> Save As... and save the file with a new name (ending in 'part 1' perhaps) to avoid mucking up the source file by accident. You could save the movie self-contained (all the movie data in the file; you could copy or move it to another machine or drive and it would work) or save it as a reference movie, QuickTime's version of an alias. Reference movies track your tweaks and edits to the movie without modifying the underlying data stored in the original file; this makes them extremely fast to work with and save, but you can't move them around between computers without their 'parent' files. It depends what you intend to do with the pieces; if you just want to give the movie sections separate file names to organize a long clip, reference movies will do fine.

Now you're ready to make the split clip. Under the Edit menu, choose Trim to Selection. Boom: you've got the first chunk of my movie sitting there in the window by itself. Go to the file menu and choose Save (not Save As...) and your movie is half the clip it used to be.

Here's the magic bit: head back up to the Edit menu and choose Undo Trim to Selection. Your movie is now reverted back the way it was before, first and second half, including your selection marks. Don't Save it, though! Go to the Edit menu again and choose Cut (or Delete, if you prefer). The second half of your movie -- right down to the frame where you cropped it earlier -- is now sitting in your player window.

If you figured out that the next step is "Save As..." with a new name containing 'part 2,' well done. Now you've got two separate movie files that each contain half the original movie, exactly where you want them. Remember that you'll need to save as self-contained movies if you're planning to ship those half-size files around to other people. You can repeat the cycle as many times as you need to clip your movie into the appropriate number of smaller bits.

It's worth checking out Apple's QuickTime 7 User Guide (PDF) if you're interested in more tricks you can do with QuickTime 7 Pro. Got a favorite? Let us know and we'll write it up for all to enjoy.

Split large movie files quickly on 10.6 with QuickTime Player 7 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 15 Nov 2011 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Split large movie files quickly on 10.6 with QuickTime Player 7 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 15 Nov 2011 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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 desktop. Here's how to recreate it:

• Visit the iPod nano's home page in Safari. Right (or control) click on an empty part of the page and select "open in dashboard."
• Center the box that appears on the Mickey Mouse clock, or any other section of the page you wish to save. Hit the "add" button that's appeared at the top of Safari. Adjust the handles that appear to get the size you want.

There's more to it, and we encourage to read the rest at Macworld. How does this work? Macworld explains it's because Apple doesn't use Flash on its site. The clock is created from HTML, CSS, JavaScript and images.

Mac 101: Use web clippings to put a Mickey Mouse clock on your Mac originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 08 Nov 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mac 101: Use web clippings to put a Mickey Mouse clock on your Mac originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 08 Nov 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

To new Mac users, the Downloads folder is quite confusing and even "invisible." As a Mac consultant, you wouldn't believe the number of times I've found multiple copies of downloads, updaters, and pictures in the Downloads folder -- all taking up valuable room on your disk.

Reader Joe Delk brought this to my attention recently and thought it would make a great Mac 101 post. Joe said "My harddrive has filled up recently and even after deleting most of the movies, iTunes or otherwise, it was still a struggle finding enough space for new movies and new programs. One day last week I had the epiphany of deleting everything in my 'Downloads' folder older than six months (I've had this MBP for around 2 years). It immediately freed up 18 GB. I was astounded. And I haven't missed anything since. Even after going through the recent stuff, I found that I had downloaded some items three, four, ten times, adding much additional space."

I'm personally pretty good about cleaning out Downloads on a regular basis, but when I did my cleaning today, I was able to toss 3 GB worth of unneeded files. Many Macs have a Download folder icon in the Dock, usually on the far right side near the Trash. If you don't have that icon, the easiest way to jump into the folder and start tossing things is to click on your Mac desktop, then select Go > Downloads from the menu bar.

Fellow TUAW blogger TJ Luoma pointed out one of his favorite ways of saving space on Macs. It's a relatively new app called Spacie (US$1.99) that's available on the Mac App Store. Spacie lists files by size or location along with their sizes, making it easy to see where you may have duplicates or large unwanted files that can be deleted.

Cleaning out the Downloads folder can be very helpful whether you have a new Mac with a smaller drive (like a MacBook Air) or an older Mac that's losing space. Be sure to remind yourself to clean it out often.

Mac 101: Reclaiming space by cleaning out the Downloads folder originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mac 101: Reclaiming space by cleaning out the Downloads folder originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments