AddressBook Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Adding copy-to-clipboard rollovers in Contacts app via AppleScript

by Ben Waldie (Apr 29th, 2013)

Apple's Contacts app includes a lot of great shortcuts for initiating different forms of communication. Just click an email address, phone number or URL field label to display a list of available options. You can send an email, show a phone number in large type or start a FaceTime call, for example. ...

How Brewster saved me time digging through old contacts (Updated)

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Jan 17th, 2013)

Update: So after a few weeks of testing Brewster I started to notice some bad things. First, contacts started merging or disappearing. Most notably: My dad. Since I'm a "junior" the Brewster support staff said it was likely due to the similarity of our names. Unfortunately his contact worked ...

Why apps in Mountain Lion might need to see your address data

by Kelly Hodgkins (Jul 31st, 2012)

In OS X Mountain Lion, Apple has added extra protection around the address book and restricted apps from gaining access to the contents without a user's permission. This added security is beneficial for users, but it poses a communication problem for developers who need to access the address ...

Cobook is an alternative address book for your Mac

by Kelly Hodgkins (Apr 13th, 2012)

If you're looking for an alternative address book for your Mac, you should take a closer look at Cobook. It's been featured by Lifehacker, TechCrunch and most recently Swiss Miss. It's defining features are its simple UI, intelligent search and social network integration which updates your ...

US Congress sends letter to Apple about Path, data access, Apple responds

by Chris Rawson (Feb 15th, 2012)

The latest "-gate" suffixed controversy, the so-called "Address Bookgate," has surrounded the popular social networking app Path. After Path was found to collect data on users' contacts without prompting users for permission, CEO Dave Morin apologized and the app was updated to change the behavior. ...

Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me create GPS address book locations

by Erica Sadun (Dec 13th, 2011)

Dear Aunt TUAW, I want to set Siri geofenced reminders for my kids' bus stop and a few other locations. The problem is that I live in a rural area, and these places don't have street addresses. What can I do? I want to be able to remind my wife to pick up milk and butter after she's done ...

Tidying up location contacts for Siri and Reminders

by Erica Sadun (Oct 24th, 2011)

My personal address book has no shame. I have contacts for people I haven't spoken to in years, contacts for people who I met at tech conferences, contacts for schools, for local stores, for repairmen, and so forth. It's one big old happy jumbled mess. I'm cool with that. When I want Siri and ...

Managing your Mac's Address Book

by TJ Luoma (Sep 2nd, 2011)

Address Book.app on your Mac offers two options for getting information out of your address book: "Export vCard..." or "Address Book Archive..." but you may not have ever known which you should use and which you should avoid as if it were a swarm of bees. Here's a simple mnemonic: "vCards ...

Video App Demo: WhitePages

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Jul 19th, 2011)

If you're over a certain age and live in the USA you may remember the days when giant books filled with addresses and phone numbers were thrown at your house each year by Ma Bell. Unlike countries elsewhere, such as France, where computers took over the task of finding phone numbers before cell ...

MobileMe: Some speculation about the transition to iCloud

by Steven Sande (Jun 7th, 2011)

I'll start this post off by stating the obvious -- there's a lot about how MobileMe services will transition to iCloud that we don't know yet. But I'm going to take a stab at some of the most pressing questions we've received from TUAW readers regarding the transition. As more facts come in, ...

Sync your address book to Google and back it up

by TJ Luoma (Mar 9th, 2011)

Former TUAW-writer (but forever in our hearts) David Chartier tried using OS X's built-in Address Book sync to Google Contacts and had a very bad experience which ended with him turning it off almost immediately. I had a similar-but-different bad experience. In my case, OS X seemed to simply ...

BusyCal Info Panel Preferences give you more event options

by TJ Luoma (Oct 22nd, 2010)

BusyCal is what iCal should have been. It continues to impress me the longer I use it, and recently I found a way to customize it that I did not know about previously. Event details, like the one shown in the image here, can be customized from a much larger list than what BusyCal shows you by ...

Tip: 'Hide' sensitive data in Address Book

by Dave Caolo (Aug 9th, 2010)

Here's an interesting tip from The Apple Blog about hiding sensitive data in plain sight. In this instance, Dave Greenbaum explains how he uses an app like Apple's Address Book to plainly display a credit card number. The catch is that, upon first glance, the record looks like any other collection ...

Mac 101: Two things I love about Address Book

by Erica Sadun (Nov 19th, 2009)

More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice Mac users. It's so easy to take Address Book for granted, and yet that simple utility has two absolutely killer features: big phone numbers and simple envelope printing. These features do exactly what their descriptions suggest: display phone numbers in ...

Add Apple's free Backup.app to your backup toolbox

by TJ Luoma (Oct 13th, 2009)

When most people think about Apple and backups they probably think about Time Machine or perhaps even Time Capsule. But Apple has a lesser-known application which you might consider using. The app, simply named Backup, was originally available only to .Mac users, but is now openly available on ...