How To
How To Enable Text Copying In OS X’s Quick Look
January 5, 2012
Quick Look is a feature that was introduced in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and has remained part of the operating system since, receiving a facelift in the latest release, Mac OS X 10.7.
If you’re browsing through your files in Finder and you’d like to preview a file before opening it, you can simply hit the spacebar and see it without opening a full program. You can’t, however, copy text from within that file. Not by default anyway.
Continue reading »Are You Running Out Of Hard Disk Storage Space? Check Your Cache Files!
January 2, 2012
Digital storage space has become less of an issue in the past few years. You can pick up a 2TB hard drive for next to nothing and add it to existing collections of storage, with the potential of a RAID array consisting of enough space to hold an entire Blu-ray movie collection.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for solid state drives. Although these new storage drives are coming down in price compared to what they cost at this point a couple of years ago, they aren’t cheap enough for you to be truly frivolous with your data.
Continue reading »How To Remove Reverse Scrolling In Mac OS X Lion
August 12, 2011
Love it or hate it, reverse scrolling looks like it’s here to stay – on Apple devices at least – with the feature being used not only on iOS devices, but also computers shipping with Mac OS X Lion.
If you don’t like the new scrolling direction in Lion, then you can still change it back to the way it was in Snow Leopard and earlier without any trouble through System Preferences.
Continue reading »How To Show The Path Bar In A Mac Finder Window
July 31, 2011
There’s nothing more annoying than getting lost in a confusing hierarchy of files and folders and more files and more folders. After all, you’re just running a computer, not a battle cruiser.
If you ever find yourself lost whilst browsing files on your Mac, you may struggle to get back to where you want to be, because the path bar isn’t shown by default in your Finder windows. Fortunately, there’s a quick way to enable it.
Continue reading »How To Copy Files And Settings Between Windows PCs With Easy Transfer
July 30, 2011
Moving from one computer to another or upgrading your present computer is a laborious task at best. Going through each file manually to make sure you have all your documents, music and photos is just the start. What about all those bookmarks you have? What about your settings that have your PC running just as you want it to?
Under a regular backup, even when using a program such as Cloudberry or Carbonite, these things would often be forgotten, but if you’re moving from one Windows computer to another then you can make use of Windows Easy Transfer instead.
Continue reading »Lion In The Spotlight: How To Use Signature Capture In Preview
July 21, 2011
If you’re creating a document to send to a lot of recipients, signing it can be a huge hassle. You could scan in a piece of paper with your signature written on it but that never works too well, leaving you with the option of signing each copy of the letter or signing one copy and then making a photocopy from the original.
Here’s a better idea: why don’t you take advantage of that FaceTime HD camera sitting comfortably at the top of that new Mac of yours? You can now use Preview in Lion to ‘scan’ in your signature from a piece of paper just by holding it over your webcam, and it works pretty well!
Continue reading »Lion In The Spotlight: How To Perform A Clean Install Of Mac OS X Lion From A USB Flash Drive
July 20, 2011
Apple’s latest version of Mac OS X, Lion, was released on the App Store today where you can buy it for £25. For most people, this is a really convenient way to buy an operating system, providing you have a fast enough internet connection, as it saves you a trip to the Apple store to buy the boxed version, which can sometimes be a pain if there isn’t one near and you have to wait for it to arrive at your home.
For power users though, being restricted to an application for an OS install is somewhat restricting, as it means that you can’t install it on to a new hard drive without first installing Snow Leopard. Don’t you think that’s a bit… backwards? I did, so instead of upgrading I chose to find a way to install it without the need for any application file. Care to know how it’s done? Let’s check it out!
Continue reading »How To Manage Your Fonts In Mac OS X
July 18, 2011
Fonts are often overlooked on our computers. We accept what we have, we keep what we don’t like, and more often than not we use a horrific Comic Sans like font for most of our documents. This is not the way things should be.
With so many fonts available on the internet and a really easy font manager in Mac OS X, it couldn’t be easier to get your documents looking great. If you have a spare 15 or so minutes, then consider taking a bit of time out from your day and getting things in order. Here’s how you do it!
Continue reading »How To Securely Empty Your Mac’s Trash
July 14, 2011
Did you know that when you empty the Trash on your Mac, there’s still a chance that your sensitive data can be accessed? It’s the same when you delete something in the Recycle Bin in Windows: although it looks as thought the file has gone, someone with the right knowledge can still rescue it from the grave and find it lurking on your hard drive until it’s physically overwritten by new data.
If you are working on a sensitive project or want to delete personal information securely, then you will want to securely empty the Trash, which overwrites the data several times after “deleting” it. Fortunately, it’s easily done, so let’s take a look.
Continue reading »How To Speed Up iTunes In Windows And Mac OS X
July 13, 2011
iTunes, on it’s day, can be a great piece of software. It keeps your entire music collection tagged, monitored and art-worked – with a little help from you of course – and it also places a music store right on your computer that integrates with your library seamlessly when you download a track. You can manage playlists, create smart playlists and even get recommended songs, but do you need all of this functionality?
On a bad day, iTunes can be buggy and slow your computer down to a crawl if you aren’t running the latest hardware. With a few simple changes, though, you can have it running in the background without worrying about your CPU cycles too much!
Continue reading »How To Tweak Your Windows Desktop To Get The Look That You Want
July 12, 2011
Are you still looking at the default wallpaper every time you boot in to your Windows machine? It may be time to spruce things up a little… Windows 7 comes with some great theme options that you can edit and customise to your heart’s content, and it doesn’t take long to do at all. Here are some great, easy ways that you can customise your Windows desktop!
Getting to the personlisation window in Windows 7 is as simple as possible. Simply right click on your desktop and select the ‘Personalize’ option to be taken to tweak central in the Control Panel (it’s not actually called Tweak Central, but that would be a very awesome name for the Windows 8 version…).
Continue reading »How To Keep Your Android Phone In Sync With Your Mac
July 5, 2011
Android has come a long way since the days of Cupcake. Four desserts later, and new Android phones are rocking Android 2.3, otherwise known as Gingerbread, which has already made its way on to lots of handsets across the world.
If you’ve recently adopted Android, you may be surprised to see that there is no dedicated application for keeping all of your data in sync with your computer, at least not on most phones. Android makes sure that everything from your contacts to your application history is synced with the cloud, but what happens when you want to transfer those contacts over to your Mac?
Continue reading »How To Keep Your Android Phone In Sync With Your Windows PC
July 4, 2011
Keeping all of the data on your phone in check is hard enough without having to worry about keeping it all synced and organised across your other devices too, but without a closed system like Apple’s iOS and iTunes relationship, it’s pretty hard to keep all of your Android data in one place locally.
Despite all of your information being in the cloud, if you wanted to access your contacts locally on your PC, you’d have a pretty tough time doing so, as Microsoft doesn’t include a tool within Windows to sync with any cloud services like you can with some of Apple’s applications in Mac OS X. This means that you’ll need a bit more third party software than you would on the Mac, but it’s still manageable!
Continue reading »How To Delete A File On Windows Without Using The Recycle Bin
April 21, 2011
A lot of Windows users will often drag a file to the recycle bin to delete it and then never think about it again, presuming it’s gone forever with no chance of being seen.
However, the Recycle Bin was actually created as an area where files to be deleted could actually be recovered if the user tried to delete it accidentally. When you drag a file to the Recycle Bin or press the delete key while highlighting a file, you then have to empty the bin for the file to be deleted.
If you just want to permanently delete a file however, knowing that it won’t be needed ever again, without even touching the Recycle Bin in Windows, there is a really simple way to do it…
Continue reading »How To Make FaceTime Calls From Safari In Mac OS X
April 18, 2011
Ah, FaceTime. When Apple released the new video calling protocol, it seemed that no one in Cupertino had ever heard of Skype the way they kept on banging on about how futuristic and awesome the technology was, even though desktop users had enjoyed the same abilities for quite some time before anyone even knew what FaceTime was.
Even so, like many things that Apple releases, it’s has caught on pretty quickly with a lot of people who like to be at the leading edge of technology. Facetime is now out for Mac OS X as well as the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch and runs in the background on a Mac in case anyone wants to call you.
Now if you want to place a FaceTime call straight from Safari without having to open the application first, it’s easily done. Here’s how!
Continue reading »How To Make Your Mac Boot Up In 64-Bit Mode
April 9, 2011
When Snow Leopard came out, it brought with it promises of a 64-bit transition, with almost all included applications completely re-written in 64-bit and support for a theoretical 64TB 16 EB (yes, exabytes!) of RAM.
One thing that most people don’t know, however, is that most 64-bit Macs don’t boot up directly into a 64-bit mode. This doesn’t affect applications, which are still capable of running in 64-bit, however, you will be booting by default in to a 32-bit kernel. Fortunately, this is easy to fix…
Continue reading »How To Remove The DRM From Your Kindle eBook Purchases
April 7, 2011
E-books are the future. They’re handy, they’re small in comparison to audio or video files, and they’re often cheaper than their physical counterparts. There’s one issue with the whole Kindle eBook market right now, though. DRM.
The music industry tried it and fell flat on its back in the process before realising that consumers would simply turn to piracy. Hollywood still struggles to figure out just how consumers want to watch content they’ve legally bought, and in many cases you may buy several versions of the same film.
Unfortunately, it seems as though Amazon Kindle publishers are enforcing the same restrictions on their customers. When you buy a book for the Kindle, you can only use it on the Kindle or a Kindle app for one of your devices. Now that’s hardly fair, but there is a way around it!
Continue reading »How To: Make The Most Of Your Mac’s Alt/Option Key
April 3, 2011
The option key – also labelled ⌥ or alt on many keyboards – on the Mac keyboard is something of a mystery to new Mac users. Most people have no idea what it does, but it’s actually one of the most useful keys you’re likely to use. With the option key held down, you can access a lot more information and features on your computer that you’d otherwise spend a long time looking for. Here are some of the best…
How To Block Annoying Security Alerts In Windows 7
April 2, 2011
In 2007, Vista brought us many restraints in the form of additional security measures. In 2009, those restrains were loosened somewhat with the introduction of Windows 7, but make no mistake: User Account Control is still in full force for those running the latest operating system to come out of Redmond.
If you want to give yourself a little more freedom, or simply take charge of your own cyber security, Windows will take it upon itself to provide you with annoying alerts from the taskbar to let you know that something is wrong with your system security. Fortunately there is a way to change this behaviour, so let’s take a look how it’s done…
Continue reading »How To Save Space On Your Mac’s Dock By Minimising Windows Into Their Icons
April 2, 2011
Many people complain about the dock in Mac OS X for one reason or another, but I’ve always liked it myself. Maybe it’s because I never used Mac OS 9 before OS X came out, or simply because the Start menu began to bore me.
Despite this, it isn’t perfect. A pet hate of mine in Leopard is the behaviour of the dock when you minimised a window: it places itself next to the trash can on the right hand side of all your folders. Not only does this make the dock ridiculously large when you are working on a lot at once and have a few windows minimised, but it also looks unsightly.
Continue reading »