Mac-101 Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Mac 101: In Mail.app, reply with selected text

by Matt Tinsley (Oct 29th, 2010)

More Mac 101, tips and tricks for the novice Mac user. I've been using the Mail app in Mac OS X for a good four or five years now. I thought I pretty much knew most of how to use it, but today I've been pleasantly surprised. I've just stumbled across a nifty little feature that I hadn't known ...

Mac 101: Keyboard tricks for Finder navigation

by Brett Terpstra (Oct 14th, 2010)

You may know that you can expand and collapse Finder folders in a tree view using the left and right arrow keys. But did you know that you can expand or collapse all of the root-level folders at once? It's a cool trick that can save you a lot of time when navigating your Mac's files. With the Finder ...

Mac 101: Comprehensive Mac system information

by Dave Caolo (Aug 30th, 2010)

More Mac 101, our series of tips and tricks for novice Mac users. Last week we pointed out some documents Apple has made available for storing important information on your Mac. Information that you might need when talking to a repair tech or Apple Genius. In that post, TUAW reader Tom pointed ...

Mac 101: Checking in on CUPS

by Erica Sadun (Jun 1st, 2010)

More Mac 101, tips and tricks for new Mac users. Ever wonder how your documents go from screen pixels to paper printouts? CUPS is the open source printing system that powers Mac OS X output, built for a variety of UNIX systems and now developed (or at least assimilated) by Apple. It provides ...

Mac 101: Integrated versus discrete graphics

by Chris Rawson (May 14th, 2010)

More Mac 101, our occasional series of posts that focuses on tips and training for new Mac users. The recent launch of Steam for the Mac has brought a great deal of focus on the Mac's graphics capabilities. Specifically, it's led many Mac users to wonder whether Steam's games will run well (or at ...

Mac 101: iCal calendar subscriptions

by Lauren Hirsch (Jul 14th, 2009)

iCal has always been an elegant program. Though it has a "subscribe" function for public calendars, it hasn't always played nicely with other devices and other calendars. This limitation forced many a user to seek greener pastures elsewhere, like Google Calendar. Calendars created in Google's web ...

Mac 101: Supersize your icon views

by Michael Rose (May 19th, 2009)

Welcome back to Mac 101, our occasional series of tips for new and novice Mac users. Over the past 25 years, icons may have become ubiquitous almost to the point of fading into the visual background; still, the little pictures that began in 32x32 black and white format have grown up quite nicely ...

Mac 101: How to set a default printer

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Apr 16th, 2009)

Over time you may wind up with several printers set up for your Mac. This results in a list of available printers every time you go to print. If the default (the first one selected) isn't to your liking you can always change it. To do so, bring up System Preferences and go to Print & Fax. Now ...

Mac 101: Spaces for your screen and brain

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Mar 27th, 2009)

Have you ever needed more room on your screen? Or have you ever needed a way to organize all the stuff you are working on with your Mac? Mac OS 10.5, aka Leopard, debuted a feature called Spaces: a way of creating extra screens on your Mac. Think of them as virtual workspaces, where you can easily ...

Mac 101: Quickly change directory in save/open dialogs

by Cory Bohon (Dec 24th, 2008)

More Mac 101, our series of tips for new Mac OS X users. Have you ever tried to open or save a file, and you want to quickly change from the directory (folder) you are browsing to another directory? It might be simpler than you think, and it doesn't require you to go searching for the directory ...

6 easy steps to migrate your Mac using Time Machine

by Cory Bohon (Oct 29th, 2008)

If you use Time Machine in Leopard, then transferring your stuff to a new Mac might be a bit simpler than you thought. With Migration Assistant, you can easily transfer Applications, Documents, Settings, and more. In this Mac 101, we're going to show you how it's done, and how you can do it ...

Mac 101: Using iChat with AIM Blasts

by Erica Sadun (Aug 5th, 2008)

More Mac 101, our ongoing series of tips and tricks for new and returning Mac users. If you're an iChat user with a need for immediate attention, AIM Blasts makes it easy to add social networking groups to iChat. When you want to have a conversation with a group of people, blasts let you IM ...

Mac 101: system-wide thesaurus at the touch of a hotkey

by Jason Clarke (May 10th, 2008)

As a Mac switcher, my Mac's built-in spelling and grammar checking has been a huge productivity boon for me. I'm someone who often gets stuck on a word, and since nothing's ever good enough for me, I've often wished that Leopard also included a built-in thesaurus. While that's not currently in the ...

Mac 101: curing multiple-monitor mixups with Detect Displays

by Michael Rose (Apr 7th, 2008)

More Mac 101, tips for the Mac beginner in you. Lucky dual-monitor users, rejoice -- with that second display on your desk, you're bound to be the productivity envy of the entire office. Just one little problem, though: sometimes your Mac has trouble recognizing that extra real estate, and rebooting ...

Mac 101: Reclaim your function keys

by Dave Caolo (Feb 24th, 2008)

There are a handful of things I miss from OS 9, like programmable function keys (and Extension conflicts. I kid.). Just like The Apple Menu and the Happy Mac, fully customizable function keys were killed by Apple's big cats. However, we're not at a loss. The folks at Bitbox have described the ...