Selling your Mac? Clean it up first by reformatting the hard drive and installing a fresh copy of OS X. Here's how If you're getting ready to sell your Mac, you need to prepare it to get ready to hand it off to its new owner. That means some housekeeping on your part to make the Mac tidy and ready for its new home. Presumably you've already backed up your Mac, including your personal...
FileVault 2 can protect your drive's data by encrypting the data on your drive. Is it worth using? An administrator password only goes so far to protect your Mac, but what happens if someone circumvents it or boots from another volume? The contents of your Mac will be vulnerable — unless you encrypt it. Fortunately Apple enables just such technology with FileVault 2 encryption, and it'...
Apple's letting the general public test pre-release OS X Mavericks software. There are good reasons not to sign up, however Apple on Tuesday announced a beta seeding program that enables anyone — not just registered developers — from gaining access to pre-release OS X Mavericks software and applications from Apple. There are some good reasons to get involved, but there are an equal...
OS X 10.10, code-named Syrah, us currently sprinting its way towards developer beta for WWDC 2014, which kicks off June 2. Syrah is rumored to be getting a Jony Ive-led interface refresh this year, like iOS 7 got last year. That makes a lot of sense, since part of the opportunity cost of iOS 7 getting all that attention was that there wasn't much left for OS X Mavericks. It shipped with...
This past week I brought you a tip about fixing Wi-Fi wake from sleep issues on some Mavericks-equipped Macs. The fix involves deleting a file in your Mac's library folder. Why it works is still beyond my understanding, but suffice it to say that it's fixed the problem for me, as well as for many of you. Now I'd like to take it to the next step to figure out why the problem is...
The feature list for OS X 10.10 Syrah has already been decided. I don't have any special insight to what it has, but I know what I'd like it to have — I made the case for a flatter interface, borrowing from iOS 7, and many of you agreed with me.
As near as I can tell, somewhere along the way after I upgraded to Mavericks, my Retina MacBook Pro stopped working right. It wouldn't reconnect to a Wi-Fi network after waking from sleep. I had to manually reconnect it; often I'd have to toggle Wi-Fi off and on again to make it work. Turns out a wonky Bluetooth preference file was the culprit. I'm still not clear on why. Here's how to...
I don't think iOS and OS X are headed for a singularity any time soon. But I would welcome more visual consistency between iOS and OS X. Ready to burn me at the stake? Hold your torch for just a minute and hear me out.
Quick Look is a nifty utility that's baked right into OS X that lets you view a preview of a file without actually having to open it. It had some issues when OS X Mavericks was released but updates have since then fixed lag issues. On top of viewing files quickly, you can also pan and zoom with just a single key stroke. Here's how:
Following Apple's release of iOS 7.1 on Monday, the company updated Xcode, its integrated development environment (IDE) for developers working on Mac and iOS applications. The new version, 5.1, is ready for download from the Mac App Store. Free (with Apple developer license) - Download now