TJ Luoma

TJ Luoma cut his computing teeth on NeXT computers back in the day when 16MB of RAM and 8MB of disk space was considered a big deal. He helped to maintain the PEAK FTP archive for NeXTStep and OpenStep software. In 2003 he got his first iPod. In 2004 he broke off a brief-but-unfortunate relationship with Windows 2000 and jumped into the Mac OS X world. In 2007 his contract with Sprint expired one week after the iPhone was released and his transformation to Mac user was complete when he ditched his Treo for an iPhone. (He formerly wrote for the Palm Addicts website.)

He and his wife are now the proud parents of an iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro, iPhone, iPhone 3GS, and an assortment of AirPorts and iPods.

TJ Luoma's Latest Posts

Friday Favorite: Optimal Layout brings app switching and window controls to your fingertips

by TJ Luoma (Feb 3rd 2012 9:00AM)

Optimal Layout is a great utility that fundamentally alters the way that I interact with my Mac. In short, it gives me the ability to use my keyboard to quickly change between windows. That might sound like what you're been doing with ⌘ + Tab, but there are a few important differences. The first ...

Safari users seeing random '404 not found' on valid support.apple.com pages

by TJ Luoma (Feb 2nd 2012 10:45AM)

For the past few weeks, I have run into a problem with links to Apple.com coming up 404 "not found." Specifically, these have all been links to pages on http://support.apple.com/. For example, this morning I did a Google search for 10.7.3 combo. One of the first results was a link to ...

Unofficial "Look Up in 1Password" bookmarklet for iOS 5

by TJ Luoma (Jan 29th 2012 4:00PM)

1Password is one of my most-used iOS apps, since I need it to log in to any site which requires a password. Since the introduction of 1Password on iOS, Agile has provided a bookmarklet which will open 1Password and then search for the current domain. That helps the fact that 1Password can't be ...

How to backup your Mac App Store apps

by TJ Luoma (Jan 23rd 2012 4:00PM)

The excellent ReadNow application, which allows you to easily read articles from your Instapaper and Read It Later articles on your Mac, has been pulled from the Mac App Store "...because of an infringement letter." Developer Michael Schneider added "[i]n my current situation I'm not allowed to ...

Ask TUAW: How do I setup a Mac with both an SSD and a regular hard drive?

by TJ Luoma (Jan 20th 2012 2:00PM)

Reader Mark R. Friedman wrote in to ask about setting up a Mac Pro with an SSD in the second optical drive, keeping the /Users folder on another drive; he wasn't sure how to do it. Macworld just discussed one method, using the built-in home folder path controls in System Preferences. The magic ...

Ask Different contest starts today with bonus for TUAW readers

by TJ Luoma (Jan 16th 2012 10:00AM)

The other day I wrote about Ask Different, the Apple-centric site in the Stack Exchange crowdsourced tech-help network. At the end of that article I mentioned something was coming, and now I can tell you the rest of the details. The Contest Starting today, Ask Different is running a contest. ...

"Ask Different" welcomes your Apple questions

by TJ Luoma (Jan 11th 2012 10:00AM)

Most of the people savvy enough to be reading an Apple tech blog are probably the ones who get asked a lot of computer-related questions by family and friends. Perhaps you provided tech support over the holidays. But what happens when you have a question? Who can you ask for help? My favorite ...

Daily Mac App: Fluid

by TJ Luoma (Jan 6th 2012 5:00PM)

Fluid lets you create an "app" out of a website. If you use one specific website all the time, this alone is very handy. For example, if you wanted a browser specifically for Gmail, you could make one using Fluid and set its own icon, download directory, and other settings. Or maybe you heard ...

Daily Mac App and Friday Favorite: CodeRunner

by TJ Luoma (Jan 6th 2012 2:00PM)

CodeRunner is a text editor for people who write code. It comes with built-in syntax highlighting for AppleScript, C, C++, Java, JavaScript (Node.js), Objective,C, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, or shell scripting. I have been using it for a few months, mostly for writing shell scripts, and love it. ...

Daily Mac App: FlashMount quickly mounts disk images

by TJ Luoma (Dec 30th 2011 2:00PM)

DMG files are often used when distributing Mac software outside the Mac App Store. While DMGs can be confusing to new users, I like them because they allow me to keep an original, unmodified version of whatever program I have downloaded. About the only drawback for me is that some DMGs come with ...