Services Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Mac OS X's Automator: I learned it by watching you!

by Sang Tang (Mar 4th, 2010)

Mac OS X's Automator has the ability to perform specific tasks from its given set of actions. For example, with a Finder-based action, you can batch move copy, move or rename files that fit a certain criteria. Similarly, image-based actions allow you to batch edit images, be it resizing, rotating ...

Five customized Automator services to help save you time

by Sang Tang (Feb 2nd, 2010)

One gem in Mac OS X that sometimes gets glanced over is the Services menu. Lots of readers may not know yet that Snow Leopard brought with it the ability to create your own customized service in Automator -- in other words, you can get additional selections on a contextual menu when right-clicking ...

BarMax offers bar prep on the iPhone for $1000

by Mike Schramm (Jan 19th, 2010)

News is going around about yet another expensive app bucking the trend on the App Store, but here's the twist: this one actually has a good reason for such a high price. BarMax CA [iTunes link] is an app currently out that costs $999.99 -- that's right, while most developers are haggling with ...

Using LaTeXiT to display math formulas

by Sang Tang (Aug 18th, 2009)

TeX is a typesetting standard that, among other things, allows you to typeset complex math formulas. One flavor of Tex is LaTeX, for which LaTeXiT serves as a front-end for on Mac OS X. Using LaTeXiT, one can drag and drop complex math formulas to a number of apps -- Pages, Keynote and TextEdit, to ...

Foursquare tries the Dodgeball concept again on the iPhone

by Mike Schramm (Mar 17th, 2009)

We're right in the middle of convention season and as I noted last night on the Talkcast, I'm here in Chicago (at least the weather's nice) instead of down in Austin with the rest of the gang. But there is a little consolation: I've had a chance to try out SXSW's newest software darling, Foursquare. ...

Mac 101: Make any text speak to you

by Cory Bohon (Nov 20th, 2008)

Have you ever wished your Mac could read a long text document to you? Well, with the speech service, you can easily have your Mac read as much or as little text as you want. While in Safari, TextEdit, Pages, and other applications; select the text you want to be read, then click the application ...

Text to Audiobook free script

by Jason Clarke (Jun 8th, 2008)

The idea of being able to select text and have it automatically converted into an audiobook using text-to-speech isn't a new one, but it is a good one. I mean, who doesn't love the idea of being able to take longer text on the road with you and listen to it in the car or on the bus? Well, if you ...

Ask TUAW: Sharing iPhoto and iTunes between users, seeing who's connected, scrubbing Sercices, and more

by Mat Lu (May 30th, 2007)

This week in Ask TUAW we have questions about sharing iPhoto and iTunes between different users on the same Mac, seeing who's connected to your wireless network, cleaning up the Services menu, installing applications, the nature of open source software and more. Remember new Mac users and Switchers ...

TUAW Exclusive: Skitch screenshot gallery

by David Chartier (Apr 12th, 2007)

We've been blogging Skitch, a new 'hybrid' photo editing and web services tool from plasq (makers of Comic Life), since Scott first met and fell in love with it at Macworld 07. Using the app through its development, it's clear that Skitch is going to knock people's socks off, with a well-executed ...

PictureSync 2 screenshots posted

by David Chartier (Apr 11th, 2007)

The crew at Holocore have seen it fit to begin teasing users of PictureSync, a slick app for both Mac and PC that makes it easy to upload pictures and videos to various social media sites, with screenshots of a forthcoming update to version 2.0. The app has clearly taken on a very i-App UI, ...

Apple TV overnight upgrade services debut

by David Chartier (Mar 30th, 2007)

Worried about ruining more than the warranty of your Apple TV whilst trying the DIY hard drive upgrade? Then why risk getting your hands dirty - TechRestore and MacService are more than happy to take care of the heavy lifting for you. Both companies have recently debuted overnight Apple TV hard ...

BoxCloud: dead simple file sharing

by David Chartier (Jan 29th, 2007)

Billing themselves as "dead simple file sharing for design and media professionals," BoxCloud seems to have a good thing going here. If you deal with a lot of clients and customers who simply aren't hip to FTP or other ways of transferring large files, BoxCloud offers a pretty simple, nay - dead ...

Stikkit web service has all sorts of Mac OS X integration

by David Chartier (Jan 21st, 2007)

Stikkit is a new web service in the same organizational vein as Backpack, but it employs some pretty wild tricks and technology to help get your productivity on. The idea behind Stikkit is to get rid of the manual page organization that locks you into one form of hierarchy or another by allowing you ...

AOL Music Now closing doors, porting customers to Napster

by David Chartier (Jan 12th, 2007)

AOL's Music Now, yet another iTunes Store competitor, has announced they are closing their doors in favor of lending the space to Napster (disclosure reminder: we're an AOL property). In a press release this morning, Napster announced it is partnering with AOL to integrate their services into the ...

Widget Watch: Menu Butler

by David Chartier (Dec 30th, 2006)

Menu Butler is most likely one of those 'run it every now and then' Dashboard widgets for those times when managing your menulets manually just isn't your bag of beans. This widget simply serves as an easy launching pad for virtually all of Mac OS X's built-in menulets that live in ...