How to Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Use Messages to send files from Mac to iPhone

by Steven Sande (Feb 20th, 2012)

Now that the Messages app is available a beta for OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion, there's a way that you can quickly send files from any Mac to an iPhone. Lifehacker tested the capability, and sure enough it works splendidly for zapping files to iPhones in the field. Here's how to do it: open ...

A very handy 1Password tip

by Steven Sande (Feb 14th, 2012)

I can't vouch for everyone out there, but at least amongst the blogging tribe here at TUAW, 1Password (from Agile Bits) is an indispensable piece of utility software. Now former TUAW blogger and current Evernote expert Brett Kelly has documented a cool 1Password tip that I'd like to pass along. ...

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

by TJ Luoma (Jan 29th, 2012)

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 ...

Split large movie files quickly on 10.6 with QuickTime Player 7

by Michael Rose (Nov 15th, 2011)

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 ...

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 ...

Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me iMessage my wife

by Erica Sadun (Oct 12th, 2011)

Dear Aunt TUAW, One iMessage "feature" is that messaging can be started on one device and picked up from another device, like from iPhone to iPad. My wife and I share an iTunes account so that we don't have to pay for apps twice, or worry about signing into different accounts. Will sharing an ...

Emulate Lion's Versions in Microsoft Word

by TJ Luoma (Sep 25th, 2011)

Microsoft Word does not support Lion's "Versions" feature yet, but there's no reason to panic. There are a few options that you can use to cobble together a work- around until the Mac BU team updates the Office suite. Also worth mentioning: although I am focusing on Microsoft Word, the same ...

Dear Aunt TUAW: How can I add art to my USB stick folders?

by Erica Sadun (Sep 21st, 2011)

Dear Aunt TUAW, I have been trying to put a custom background image on a USB drive with little success. I know how to do this on a standard folder and a homemade DVD, but I can't seem to make it stay on the USB when I plug it back in. Do you have an idea as to what' I'm doing wrong? Your ...

Hackinations: 5 really good Lion tweaks

by Erica Sadun (Jul 26th, 2011)

Lion. We love the OS. We hate a few tiny details. Here are five extremely handy Lion tweaks that can improve your day-to-day use. Enable each by typing the supplied commands into Terminal. 1. Turn off those #*%(ing zooming windows Launch Safari or TextEdit and then hit Command-N a few times. ...

AirDrop: Lion's new way to transfer files

by Steven Sande (Jul 21st, 2011)

One very cool new feature in OS X Lion is AirDrop. It's a way to leverage your home or office Wi-Fi network to send files to others who are also running Lion by just dragging and dropping those files onto an icon representing the other person. In this short post, I'll show you how AirDrop works ...

Setting your Apple ID in Lion

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Jul 21st, 2011)

While it only affects a few functions now, like AirDrop, your Apple ID will be even more important when iCloud is available. To set your Apple ID in Lion (provided you have one), go to System Preferences and click on Users & Groups. There you will see your login information plus a button to ...

Dev Juice: Help me recover my beta partition

by Erica Sadun (Jul 18th, 2011)

Dear Dev Juice, I was in the Lion beta program. Now that 10.7 is about to release I want to reclaim the small partition I added to my laptop that I was using to test it. How do I do this? Shawn Dear Shawn, Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility) makes it easy to recover ...

Open the Mac App Store in your browser

by Erica Sadun (Jul 14th, 2011)

I was up late last night building a Mac App Store scraper. In the process I discovered how to browse the store in Safari. Without further ado, let me share the geek. It turns out you can spoof curl with the Mac App Store user agent to access its data. You'll need to use Terminal for this ...

iPhone 101: Using Voice Control

by Dave Caolo (Jun 10th, 2011)

While we wait for iOS 5 to deliver cool new features, here's a look at Voice Control, a feature introduced with the iPhone 3GS model. There are three types of Voice Control commands: phone, music and other. Here's how to use each. Launching Voice Control Of course, you can't use Voice Control ...

How to: Listen to your Amazon Cloud Player music on your iOS device

by Erica Sadun (Mar 30th, 2011)

[H/t to Mashable's Christina Warren, who wrote this up yesterday. We independently arrived at the same place and had not seen Christina's writeup. - Ed.] Have you signed up for Amazon Cloud? It's a newly launched service that offers 5 GB of free online cloud storage and affordable paid plans up ...