Mac os x Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

OS X 10.7.3 causing CUI errors for some, Combo Update recommended

by Michael Rose (Feb 2nd, 2012)

It's not a good thing when a simple point release of Apple's desktop OS causes a flurry of error reports with a central theme of "I just installed the 10.7.3 version of Lion and now nothing works." Last night and this morning, threads began popping up on Apple's support forum and elsewhere ...

Apple seeds seventh 10.7.3 beta to developers

by Dave Caolo (Jan 25th, 2012)

Apple released the seventh beta of Mac OS 10.7.3 (build 11D50) to developers yesterday amid the hubbub of the financial conference call. The update lists no known issues and asks developers to focus on iCloud Document Storage, Address Book, iCal, Mail, Spotlight and Safari. The delta update is a ...

Hidden secret apps of CoreServices

by Erica Sadun (Jan 13th, 2012)

Nestled within the bosom of your Mac's system folder lie many powerful and curious applications. Not intended for direct access, the denizens of the CoreServices directory work as clients for other OS apps such as System Preferences or Safari. There are several CoreServices apps we use often at ...

Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me nix the window shadows in Lion

by Erica Sadun (Dec 27th, 2011)

Dear Aunt TUAW, I recently added a second external monitor to my 13" MacBook Pro. My problem comes with the OS X Lion features that give windows a 3D depth-look, specifically, the shadow effect. As a window on the external monitor approaches the virtual border of the built-in LCD of the MBP, ...

On this day in 1996, Apple acquired NeXT (Updated)

by Steven Sande (Dec 20th, 2011)

Updated to clarify that 10.0 was the first official client version of Mac OS X, and that Mac OS X Server shipped prior to its release. On this day, December 20, just fifteen years ago, Apple paid $400 million to purchase NeXT. That's the move that brought Steve Jobs back to the company he ...

Talking Points Memo sees Windows visitors decline, Mac and iOS users soar

by Michael Grothaus (Nov 27th, 2011)

The progressive left-leaning political news site Talking Points Memo issued an interesting set of (non-partisan) statistics that shows just how much the share of total devices running Microsoft Windows has declined in the last five years. As you can see from the chart above, in 2006 78% of ...

Type to your iPhone with Type2Phone and your Mac keyboard

by Erica Sadun (Nov 25th, 2011)

As a general rule, I avoid reviewing apps from friends. You send me a pitch, I pass it along to the team. But when Matthias Ringwald, Bluetooth developer extraordinaire told me about Type2Phone, I really wanted to try it out myself. For $4.99, this Mac app transforms your computer into a ...

DevilRobber now "improved", still nasty malware threat

by Kelly Guimont (Nov 18th, 2011)

We previously told you about DevilRobber and what sort of unsavory things it can do to (and with) your Mac. (In case you don't click over to read the article, here's the scoop: it's bad. Real bad.) Back in the day (November 1st), it was a Trojan horse and sent a little of your personal info ...

EasyFind is a free alternative to Spotlight

by TJ Luoma (Nov 17th, 2011)

EasyFind is a free application that helps you find files and folders on your Mac. And yes, it's better than Spotlight. EasyFind is made by the folks at DEVONtechnologies who are well-known for developing powerful search software DEVONthink, DEVONagent Pro, and DEVONagent Express, which is to ...

Poll: Which version of Mac OS X are you running?

by Matt Tinsley (Nov 11th, 2011)

According to Chitika, an analytics company, Mac OS X Lion only holds 16% of the Mac OS market share, trailing behind Snow Leopard (56) -- indicating poor adoption of the newest operating system in comparison to previous releases. Even though Apple announced over a million downloads of Mac OS ...

iCloud now features Find My Mac service

by Chris Rawson (Oct 13th, 2011)

Find my iPhone and Find My iPad have been around for awhile via MobileMe, and we've heard dozens of success stories where people used the service to recover lost or stolen iOS devices. Macs have been reliant on third-party solutions or clever hacking to enable the same functionality -- until ...

How to enable the FTP server (ftpd) in Lion

by TJ Luoma (Sep 29th, 2011)

Apple decided to remove the GUI for enabling and disabling FTP from Mac OS X Lion. Generally speaking, that's not a bad move, because most times SFTP is available anywhere FTP is, and SFTP is far superior in terms of security. No one should be using FTP over the Internet. However, there are some ...

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 ...

DimScreen simply dims your screen

by TJ Luoma (Sep 19th, 2011)

Once upon a time, I had an application which would dim the screen of my Mac down to 0, and then exit. Somewhere along the way I seem to have lost the app and can no longer find it. Yes, I know I could just hold F1 and do the same thing manually, but I liked having an app that just did it for ...

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 ...