Tip Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Mac 101: Encode media from Automator or the command line in Lion

by Kelly Hodgkins (Nov 22nd, 2011)

There's an easy way in OS X 10.7 Lion to convert video or audio from one format to another, using a fixed suite of conversion settings. One approach uses Automator and can be launched from the Finder. The other uses the Terminal application and the afconvert (for audio) or avconvert (for video) ...

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 ...

Macworld's tips to make OS X Lion's iCal less annoying

by Chris Rawson (Sep 12th, 2011)

The changes made to iCal in OS X Lion have definitely been polarizing, and even some of the novice Mac users I know have found some of them questionable. The word "fugly" has come up more than once when discussing iCal's new faux-leather trim, an interface choice that makes a little more sense ...

How to auto-join hotspots in Lion

by Michael Grothaus (Aug 15th, 2011)

Lion makes it easy to join free Wi-Fi hotspots with landing pages, like those at Starbucks and McDonald's (often offered by AT&T in the US and BT OpenZone in the UK). Technology baked into OS X Lion eliminates the need to use a browser to pass a landing page that stands between you and the ...

Reveal the Dock in Lion's fullscreen apps

by Michael Grothaus (Jul 28th, 2011)

MacWorld has published a nice little tip that allows Lion users to reveal the Dock while in fullscreen apps. To do so, while in any fullscreen app, simply move the pointer all the way to the edge where the Dock is pinned. Once your cursor is resting on that edge of the screen, swipe or move the ...

Where to find the download progress for your Lion install

by Mel Martin (Jul 20th, 2011)

Lion is a multi-gigabyte download, coming in around 4 GB, but when you start there is no onscreen indication of how it's going aside from the tiny progress bar in the Dock. Where's the little graph like the one you get in Safari when you are downloading software in the Mac App Store? Well, the ...

How to use your iPhone's volume buttons for shutter control in Camera+

by Richard Gaywood (Aug 10th, 2010)

If you use Camera+ -- and you should; we love it -- you might have been excited by the recent talk of using the volume control buttons on the side of your iPhone to take pictures with. We've all found fumbling with the touchscreen button a little fiddly from time to time, right? I've come worryingly ...

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 ...

The iPad rent-a-date

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Apr 9th, 2010)

You can go tickle an iPad for free at any Apple Store. You can caress, stroke, and otherwise test out the "magical" touch-based interface. However, if you want to go further, second base for example, be prepared to pony up $50. TUAW has realized that for that low, low price, you can bring that ...

iPhone 101: Save space on your iPhone without removing a thing

by Michael Grothaus (Apr 6th, 2010)

It's important to note that this on-the-fly conversion does not alter your original files inside your iTunes library -- those will remain at whatever bitrate and in whatever file format you had them in. How well does this work? I saved a whopping 1.5GBs of space on my 8GB iPhone. Others here at ...

TUAW Tip: Getting your fill with iTunes' autofill

by Sang Tang (Jan 17th, 2010)

I'm the iTunes music pharmacist for my family's iPod and iPhone music libraries. In short, what this means is that, whether it's due to "getting sick of hearing the same thing over and over when I'm running" or wanting a new song or album on their iPod, they come to me when they want their music ...

TUAW Tip: Get an instant definition of any word in a pop up window

by Mel Martin (Jan 15th, 2010)

Gee, I love stuff like this, and I wish I would have known about it a long time ago. The tip comes from OSXhelp.com and it's a great one. Need a quick definition of a word in Safari or an email? Yes, you probably already knew you could right-click on a highlighted word and bring up the OS X ...

TUAW Tip: Veency remote controls your iPhone from your Mac

by Mike Schramm (Jan 12th, 2010)

Reader Kevin C. sent us a tip the other day -- he recently got a Bose SoundDock II, which is a nice little speaker dock, as a Christmas gift, and he wants to know: with his iPhone sitting all the way across the room, is there any way he can control the iPhone from his Mac? Obviously there are lots ...

TUAW Tip: Sync your bookmarks to an iPhone or iPod touch with Xmarks

by Mike Schramm (Dec 30th, 2009)

I'm an avid user of Xmarks (formerly Foxmarks) as are probably many of you. I browse the Internet regularly on three different computers, and so it helps immensely to have all of my Firefox bookmarks and passwords synced. But the one fly in my ointment has been my iPhone's mobile Safari ...

Gamesalad offers $99 iPhone game publishing

by Mike Schramm (Nov 2nd, 2009)

We mentioned Gamesalad's plans to bring their publishing system to the iPhone earlier this year, and now they've done it: for $99 a year, they say that you'll be able to design games on their game creator development tool, and then publish them straight out to the iPhone's App Store. If you don't ...