Mac 101 Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

TUAW Help Line: holiday gift questions & answers

by Michael Rose (Dec 25th, 2011)

The goose is cooked, the cookies crumbled, the wrapping paper thrown away and the relatives released to their neutral corners. Finally, you can get down to the post-holiday fun of setting up your new iPad, or transferring your data from your old ...

Mac 101: Create a guest account

by Kelly Guimont (Nov 22nd, 2011)

"Can I use your computer real quick?" Depending on who asks you this question over the next week, reactions may range from nothing to frantic flailing toward your machine to see if you can make it do something that looks like it is unusable, ...

Mac 101: Locating the root path of a Pages document in Pages

by Matt Tinsley (Nov 16th, 2011)

Here is a Mac 101 tip for novice Mac users. Running Pages in Mac OS X Lion means you never have to worry about saving a document, it just happens automatically. While this is wonderful, this new feature has caused me to scratch my head a few ...

Split large movie files quickly on 10.6 with QuickTime Player 7

by Michael Rose (Nov 15th, 2011)

Updated to clarify that a split clip feature exists in 10.7's version of QuickTime X. Say what you will about the QuickTime X framework and player introduced in Mac OS X 10.6 -- it's crazy speedy on multicore machines, it provides the foundation ...

Mac 101: Use web clippings to put a Mickey Mouse clock on your Mac

by Megan Lavey-Heaton (Nov 8th, 2011)

Dashboard has several fantastic features, including the ability to turn any web clipping into a widget. Macworld readers decided to use this feature to grab the functioning Mickey Mouse clock from the iPod nano home page and use it on your ...

Mac 101: Reclaiming space by cleaning out the Downloads folder

by Steven Sande (Sep 22nd, 2011)

To new Mac users, the Downloads folder is quite confusing and even "invisible." As a Mac consultant, you wouldn't believe the number of times I've found multiple copies of downloads, updaters, and pictures in the Downloads folder -- all taking ...

Mac 101: Format choices for USB flash drives

by Chris Rawson (Sep 19th, 2011)

The overwhelming majority of USB flash drives you buy are going to come in one of two formats: FAT32 or NTFS. The first format, FAT32, is fully compatible with Mac OS X, though with some drawbacks that we'll discuss later. If the drive comes ...

Mac 101: Upgrade your Mac's RAM

by Chris Rawson (Aug 30th, 2011)

Upgrading your Mac's RAM is one of the simplest and cheapest ways to improve its performance, and it might be more necessary than ever if you're running OS X Lion. While Apple states that the minimum required RAM for Lion is 2 GB, in my ...

Mac 101: Don't forget about Hot Corners

by Matt Tinsley (Aug 26th, 2011)

More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice Mac users. After reading fellow TUAW blogger Dave Caolo's post on Mac OS Lion and Mission Control, and then TUAW blogger Chris Rawson's Additional Tips for OS X Lion's Mission Control, I thought it ...

Mac 101: Additional tips for OS X Lion's Mission Control

by Chris Rawson (Aug 12th, 2011)

TUAW's Dave Caolo did an in-depth look at OS X Lion's new window/application manager, Mission Control, the day of OS X Lion's launch. If you're completely confused about Mission Control's features, Dave's post is a good place to get a baseline ...

Mac 101: Capture your signature using OS X Lion's Preview app

by Chris Rawson (Aug 10th, 2011)

OS X Lion has made signing PDFs easier than ever before. It's been possible to scan in your handwritten signature and sign documents in earlier versions of Mac OS X, but it was a complex process and one most people probably never trifled with. ...

Mac 101: Should I upgrade my Mac or buy a new one?

by Chris Rawson (Aug 8th, 2011)

"Should I upgrade the Mac I have or buy a new one?" It's a question that faces every one of us at some point, and it's not always easy to answer. In a lot of cases, owning a Mac can complicate this answer simply because the darned things are so ...

Mac 101: Using Keychain Access to remember the password you forgot

by Steven Sande (Jun 29th, 2011)

One of the unsung joys of being a Mac consultant is getting emails from clients with problems that aren't critical enough warrant a billable office visit but still need attention. This morning, I heard from client who needed to add two Macs onto ...

Mac 101: Quick navigation of browser tabs

by Kelly Guimont (Feb 21st, 2011)

If you ever use the tabs in your web browser, you may have a hard time navigating between them as you take your hand off the keyboard, put it on your mouse, click on the tab you're looking for, look at that page for a moment and then click back on ...

Get an iTunes or Mac App Store account without a credit card

by Michael Terretta (Jan 7th, 2011)

Parents, the safest way to keep your kids from accidentally spending your money in any of the iTunes stores, including the App Stores, is to give them their own iTunes Account that doesn't have an associated credit card. Whether you want to let your ...

How the Mac App Store works, and get Twitter for Mac free

by Michael Terretta (Jan 6th, 2011)

The new Mac App Store is online, and ready for you to use. It's an incredibly simple way to find, install, and manage your favorite software. First of all, to see the Mac App Store at all, you'll need to run your Software Updates (under the Apple ...