Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Mac 101: Getting your RSS feeds in your inbox in Mail.app

by Sang Tang (Dec 29th, 2009)

RSS reader support has been a built-in feature of Mail.app since version 3.0 (when Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard was released). Although I subscribe to a number of RSS feeds, I've yet to find the need for a dedicated RSS reader app -- such as Newsgator's ...

Making Microsoft Office on the Mac look more PC-like

by Sang Tang (Dec 28th, 2009)

Previously, I've mentioned that, despite their similar DNA and file interoperability, Microsoft Office for the PC and Mac are different in their own little subtle ways. This is part function: for example, Microsoft Excel on the Mac uses the 1904 ...

Mail.app plugin WideMail makes a comeback in Snow Leopard

by Brett Terpstra (Dec 28th, 2009)

Since upgrading, Snow Leopard users with widescreen displays may have been missing WideMail, the plugin for Mail.app that gives you a 3-column display of your messages. We mentioned it some time ago, and you may recall it being one of the casualties ...

Drag and drop your windows into tidiness with Cinch

by Mike Schramm (Dec 23rd, 2009)

I'd never heard of Cinch, just mentioned over at Cult of Mac, but it's such a great idea I thought I'd check into it. Basically, Cinch does what all great Mac software does: it works in the background and lets you do what you want to do, skipping ...

"Cinch" your desktop windows into place

by Brett Terpstra (Dec 18th, 2009)

Cinch is a new Mac utility from Irradiated Software. It helps keep your desktop windows organized by snapping them into predefined sizes and locations when you hold them near an edge of your screen. While its toolset is limited in comparison to its ...

Give your Dashboard a kick in the pants

by Michael Grothaus (Dec 14th, 2009)

After reading through the comments on my post about Dashboard Widgets, I noticed quite a few people lamented the fact that the widgets have to go through a 'start-up' process every time you turn on your Mac or log out and log back in. Well, not ...

V-Studio 100: not a piece of cake but a great piece of hardware

by Josh Carr (Dec 8th, 2009)

Most aspiring musicians, at least those of us who are computer nerds, have spent time recording their music to distribute it digitally ... to Grandma. Most of us pass GarageBand with flying colors, graduate from Logic Express and eventually get a ...

Mail.app rules!

by Sang Tang (Dec 1st, 2009)

One of the neat things about Mail.app is rules. Rules will perform a specified action if a certain condition is met. These actions include moving, copying, and setting the color of a message, as well as automatically replying, forwarding, and ...

Ommwriter, an extra helping of zen for writers

by Brett Terpstra (Nov 30th, 2009)

As part of our Back to School series last year, I covered some of my favorite writing tools. Many of the writing applications I've mentioned there and elsewhere have full-screen, distraction-free editing modes, ala WriteRoom, which gets plenty of ...

ScreenSteps 2.7 preview and some Holiday savings

by Brett Terpstra (Nov 23rd, 2009)

We've mentioned ScreenSteps from Blue Mango Learning Systems before. A few times, actually. Version 2.7 is coming up quickly, and it's going to have some great new features. There's also a sale this week that I thought was worth mentioning, check the ...

Pasting with style in Apple's iWork suite

by Sang Tang (Nov 16th, 2009)

In Apple's iWork suite, the "Paste and Match Style" or "Paste Style" options, as implied in their names, allow you to paste the style from one element onto another; or to paste an element into a document and to match the style of the document that ...

Waveboard on the iPhone, Google Wave access slightly better than Mobile Safari

by Brett Terpstra (Nov 4th, 2009)

If you're lucky enough to have a Google Wave account, you may be familiar with Waveboard. I started out using Wave via a Fluid SSB, running Wave Growl for Growl notifications and Dock badges. Then I found Waveboard, and it made things smooth enough ...

Mac 101: How to manually enable menu extras

by Josh Carr (Nov 2nd, 2009)

More Mac 101, our tips and tricks for novice Mac users. For some reason, I tend to come across times when my optical drive doesn't want to eject the CD or DVD that's in it. I found myself having to restart the computer and try again... in more ...

Timeline: no-regret version control for Photoshop

by Brett Terpstra (Oct 28th, 2009)

If you work in Photoshop, you've probably had designs which branched off from the original look, based on your own ideas or client feedback. This has, more than likely, resulted in multiple files with names like mockup1.psd, mockup1b.psd, ...

Curio 6.1 gets even more creative and productive

by Brett Terpstra (Oct 15th, 2009)

I wrote about Curio last year, and the past few months have brought quite a few additions to this creative brainstorming and productivity powerhouse. We already saw Evernote integration, and between the last two releases (6.0 and 6.1) Curio has ...

Pear Note: note taking for the best of us

by Sang Tang (Oct 14th, 2009)

Though I graduated from college (Go Bears!) not so long ago, in computer years it seems like ages: notebook computers have almost completely replaced spiral-bound notebooks, and PowerPoint and Keynote are increasingly supplanting the chalkboard. The ...