Have you ever wanted to have a folder appear in two places at once on your Mac? If so, you should know about creating aliases. An alias is a pointer, or shortcut, to the original folder. An alias looks like the original folder, but when you double-click it, the original folder opens. Follow these instructions … Read more
Starting with OS X 10.7 (Lion) Apple changed some fundamental ways that scrolling works. Specifically, the scrollbars are hidden until one moves the cursor on top of the scrollbar area, then the scrollbars appear. Additionally, the scrollbars no longer have arrows at the ends to let you slowly scroll up and down. Here are some … Read more
Are you interested in mounting your iMac or a monitor on an articulated arm connected to either your desk or a wall? I have been pleasantly surprised by the number of requests I’ve had about this topic over the past year. Here’s a primer on what you should know. When you start to look into mounting … Read more
Were you annoyed with Apple when they introduced a new connector for the iPhone 5, 4th generation iPad and iPad mini in Oct 2012? Did you wonder why they did this? Here’s some information to help you understand why Apple did this and the implications for you.
Read moreDo you have an older, magnetically attached laptop power cord that you’d like to connect to your new Mac laptop which requires a thinner connector? If so, you could buy Apple’s MagSafe to MagSafe 2 Converter ($10). In 2006, Apple introduced magnetically attached laptop power cords, called the MagSafe Power Adapter, on their MacBook Pro. Since then, … Read more
Do you want to know the age of your Mac? Do want to gather the technical specs of your Mac so you can sell it on Craigslist? Do you want to find your Mac’s serial number so you can determine if it is still covered by its warranty? If so, you could use Micromat’s free … Read more
Do you store your contact information in Apple’s Contacts application? If so, you can easily create a contact list by dragging contacts into Apple’s spreadsheet application, Numbers. Numbers is not as commonly used as Excel, but the more I use Numbers the more I like it. I recently discovered this incredible feature. Contacts is the … Read more
Have you ever found a website while browsing the web on your iPhone only to find that the text was so small you’d rather read it on your Mac? Or, have you ever started to read a web site on your MacBook Pro, but wanted to finish reading it on your iPad while in bed? … Read more
Do you find it difficult to search the iTunes Store? Do you find it difficult to locate the song, book, or app that you seek? Do you find it difficult to compare similar applications since you can only view one product at a time? If so, there is a better way to search the iTunes … Read more
Have you ever wanted to create your own custom map online? For example, maybe you have a list of addresses and you’d like to see them all in one picture. Now you can. In March 2013 Google released their Maps Engine Lite tool that allows you to make maps of your own address list by … Read more
Are you a residential customer using Comcast’s Xfinity High-Speed Internet service? If so, you can easily monitor your monthly data usage. Historically, Comcast has monitored and capped monthly data usage. As people increasingly stream videos using AppleTVs and iPads and backup the MacBook laptops to the cloud using online backup services, more users were approaching … Read more
If you use Dropbox, the very popular file sharing service, you might have noticed that some of your files have the words Conflicted Copy appended to their file name. There are two circumstances which can cause conflicted copies. They most commonly occur when two people edit the same file at the same time. They can … Read more
Update December 2016 – CenturyLink, WaveG and Frontier Communications have offered fiber-optic based Internet service for a while. Service is not available in all neighborhoods and towns. Use the links, above, to check availability in your neighborhood. I’m not aware of any smaller players who are offering such service. Update: January 2014 – Seattle’s deal with Gigabit … Read more
Do you use your iPhone’s Notes application? Would you like to view those notes on your Mac? If your Mac is running OS X Mountain Lion, you can view them easily. In Mountain Lion Apple added a new Notes application. You can sync your iPhone notes to the Mac Notes application using your iCloud account. … Read more
Here’s an overview of how to retrieve a custom iPhone voicemail greeting. A client recently changed her data plan with AT&T. Somehow, as a consequence of this change, her custom outgoing voicemail greeting was lost. Typically, this greeting is stored on AT&T’s system, so it can be played to a caller even if one’s iPhone … Read more
Would you like to type in another language on your iPhone? Would you like to add Emoji to your email and text messages? Emoji are a collection of picture icons. This all started with smiley faces, but Emoji goes far beyond that.
Read moreWhen you type a word into a Spotlight search field on your Mac, your Mac will perform a search of the contents of your files by default. Personally, I tend to search for files by file name most often. Here’s an easy way to get your Mac to search by file name instead of file content. … Read more
In last week’s Tech Tip, I provided an overview of a few ways a person can remotely access their own Mac, including LogMeIn. I tend to use LogMeIn to provide my clients with remote support. If you’d like to set up your Mac to allow me to remotely control it, please follow these instructions for downloading and installing … Read more
Do you want to remotely access your Mac so you can open applications and edit files on it? This is an increasingly common request. Here’s a quick overview of a few ways to remotely access your Mac.
Read moreWould you like to improve the security of your online accounts such as your AppleID, Gmail, FaceBook, PayPal and Dropbox accounts? If so, you should consider turning on two-step authentication for these accounts. Two-step authentication is also called two-factor authentication. Typically, two-factor authentication requires you to enter your password as well as a code sent … Read more