Utility Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Ailing Mac? Try Drive Genius 3

by Ilene Hoffman (May 24th, 2013)

When your Mac starts acting unreliably your first line of defense is Apple's Disk Utility, but that solves a small number of problems, such as permissions and disk verification and repair. A good second line of defense is Drive Genius 3 for Mac from Prosoft Engineering. Drive Genius offers repair ...

Origin Stories: Joel Grasmeyer, Construction Cost Estimator

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Feb 8th, 2013)

I met up with Joel a while ago and we struck up a conversation about estimating construction costs because my father-in-law had been a contractor. He had what looked like a great app for estimating these costs, and it's now available for iPhone, iPad and Mac. In this Origin Stories I talk to ...

Use Automator to get the Airport Utility 5.6.1 working on OS X 10.8

by Megan Lavey-Heaton (Jan 22nd, 2013)

When I acquired a second printer dedicated to making prints and photos, I decided to dig the older Airport Express I have out of a drawer and set it up to be a wireless print server for that printer. However, I ran into a bit of a snafu: the older Airport Expresses require AirPort Utility 5.6.1 ...

TUAW Origin Stories: Bartender

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Oct 5th, 2012)

We wrote up Bartender for Mac as a Friday Favorite some time ago, even though the app isn't out of beta. In this Origin Stories, I speak with Ben Surtees, who has been programming since he was 15. Check out the story behind Bartender in the video below, and the app itself if you're tired of ...

TUAW Origin Stories: PDF Cabinet

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Sep 28th, 2012)

PDF Cabinet is one of many PDF tools on the App Store, but Cabinet features some niceties like real-time collaboration and drag-and-drop document management. It also sports a skeumorphic or "real-world" look, complete with stitched leather, if you're into that sort of thing. In the video ...

Notification Hacking with Scheduled Notifications utility

by Erica Sadun (Sep 24th, 2012)

A while back, Matt Gemmell wrote a great little US$3.00 utility called Sticky Notifications that merged Mountain Lion's notification center with sticky notes. It allows you to pin reminders to your desktop. Now, Jeremy Tregunna has released a time-triggered twist on the idea. His Scheduled ...

Liquid Information is like a Swiss Army knife for text

by Kelly Hodgkins (Sep 24th, 2012)

Liquid Information is one of those time-saving utilities that you can't live without once you start using it. Advertised as a "Swiss Army knife of text," the OS X utility lets you select a string of text in any app then search, look up, translate, calculate and share that information quickly. ...

Gemini now finds duplicates in iPhoto and iTunes

by Kelly Hodgkins (Sep 21st, 2012)

Gemini from MacPaw is one of those utilities you don't use every day, but is extremely handy to have around. The OS X software excels at finding duplicate files on internal drives, external drives or network volumes. It scans a folder at lightning speed, while giving you the option to view your ...

TUAW Origin Stories: Picky

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Sep 7th, 2012)

Picky used to be Pod+, but since WWDC (when this was filmed), the developer has changed the name. The idea behind Picky is simple: a tool for quickly filtering through artists and songs by viewing them based on how many songs of theirs are on your iOS device. When Pod+ became Picky, the dev who ...

Daily iPhone App: GPS4CAM adds geolocation to your DSLR photos

by Steven Sande (Aug 31st, 2012)

While many photography applications like iPhoto and Aperture can make use of GPS information in terms of grouping pictures by location, there aren't a lot of cameras that have built-in GPS receivers. Of course, that's not a problem if you do all or most of your photography with an iPhone, since ...

Friday Favorite: Bartender

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Aug 31st, 2012)

There comes a time in a power user's life when the number of his menu bar applications exceeds the amount of real estate in the menu bar, a condition made worse by primary applications with a lot of menus. The cure for this? A handy little app, which is still undergoing testing, called ...

Friday Favorite: Desktop Tidy

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Aug 17th, 2012)

Part of my blogging workflow uses Skitch for screenshots. As a result, I wind up with images all over my desktop at the end of the day like, well, a messy desktop after a busy day. If you find yourself with files constantly cluttering your desktop as well, check out Desktop Tidy on the Mac App ...

DevJuice: Sim Launcher updated

by Erica Sadun (May 3rd, 2012)

Landon Fuller of the Plausible Labs cooperative has just updated simlaunch, a github project that allows you to create iOS Simulator application bundles that launch from the desktop. This utility helps developers to share builds for testing, for promotion, and for fun that run on the Mac ...

Daily Mac App: DragonDrop provides a Finder caddy for your drag-and-drop files

by Erica Sadun (Mar 28th, 2012)

Sometimes there are problems you didn't even know you had -- and solutions that make your life so much better. DragonDrop is one of those solutions. You know when you have to drag items between folders and you end up juggling multiple Finder windows? It's such a pain getting both windows ...

German court halts Apple's second slide-to-unlock case against Samsung

by Kelly Hodgkins (Mar 16th, 2012)

The Mannheim Court in Germany has delayed Apple's second slide-to-unlock case against Samsung, says FOSS Patents. During this pause in proceedings, the German Patent and Trademark Office is examining the validity of Apple's slide-to-unlock utility model. A utility model is a quickly-approved ...