Howto Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

One trick for getting iTunes Match to recognize older tracks

by Michael Rose (Nov 20th, 2011)

Welcome, iTunes Match users. After you've coughed over your 25 bucks and waited all night for your music library to reconcile with the great iCloud in the sky, you may have noticed those mysterious cloud status icons scattered through your tracks. Apple's tech note summarizes the icons; ...

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 for next-generation features, it lets you ...

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 ...

Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me iMessage my wife

by Erica Sadun (Oct 12th, 2011)

Dear Aunt TUAW, One iMessage "feature" is that messaging can be started on one device and picked up from another device, like from iPhone to iPad. My wife and I share an iTunes account so that we don't have to pay for apps twice, or worry about signing into different accounts. Will sharing an ...

Emulate Lion's Versions in Microsoft Word

by TJ Luoma (Sep 25th, 2011)

Microsoft Word does not support Lion's "Versions" feature yet, but there's no reason to panic. There are a few options that you can use to cobble together a work- around until the Mac BU team updates the Office suite. Also worth mentioning: although I am focusing on Microsoft Word, the same ...

Dear Aunt TUAW: How can I add art to my USB stick folders?

by Erica Sadun (Sep 21st, 2011)

Dear Aunt TUAW, I have been trying to put a custom background image on a USB drive with little success. I know how to do this on a standard folder and a homemade DVD, but I can't seem to make it stay on the USB when I plug it back in. Do you have an idea as to what' I'm doing wrong? Your ...

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 experience this is nowhere near enough memory to get ...

Mac 101: Creating a recovery disk using Recovery Disk Assistant

by Steven Sande (Aug 9th, 2011)

Lion's recovery partition is a wonderful idea, but doesn't really help out if your hard drive fails. That's why yesterday's announcement of the Recovery Disk Assistant from Apple was welcome news to a lot of people who were trying to figure out how they could easily create a recovery disk on ...

Kindle ebooks: How to buy and install them now that the store is gone

by Steven Sande (Jul 27th, 2011)

Since Amazon acquiesced to Apple's onerous rules and removed the one-click buy button from the Kindle apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, a couple of mainstream websites have whined that it's "too hard to buy ebooks on your iPad now." Yes, it is horribly difficult -- you now have to click or tap ...

Hackinations: 5 really good Lion tweaks

by Erica Sadun (Jul 26th, 2011)

Lion. We love the OS. We hate a few tiny details. Here are five extremely handy Lion tweaks that can improve your day-to-day use. Enable each by typing the supplied commands into Terminal. 1. Turn off those #*%(ing zooming windows Launch Safari or TextEdit and then hit Command-N a few times. ...

Dear Aunt TUAW: I need a prettier lock screen

by Erica Sadun (Jul 25th, 2011)

Dear Aunt TUAW, I wanted to ask if Auntie TUAW could look into how to change the lion lock screen. Many sites show different lock screens. My lock screen is just black and I wanted to change it so if you could look into it I would appreciate it thanks. Your loving nephew, LaRonn B Dear ...

Dear Aunt TUAW: Where's my Lozenge?

by Erica Sadun (Jul 24th, 2011)

Dear Aunt TUAW, I miss the lozenge. You know what I mean? The chicklet thing that used to be at the top right of my Finder windows. Click it and it would show the sidebar. Click again, sidebar gone. How can I show and hide the sidebar in Lion? Your loving nephew, Michael N. Dear ...

Lion: Restoring Safari's download list keyboard shortcut

by Steven Sande (Jul 23rd, 2011)

Oh, those poor Mac OS X Lion developers. They work their tails off to get a new version of OS X out to us, and then people immediately find things that they liked better in the old version. Red Sweater Software founder and über-geek Daniel Jalkut found that the loss of a keyboard ...

Apple TV 101: Create a genius playlist on Apple TV

by Matt Tinsley (Jul 22nd, 2011)

Of late, the Apple TV hasn't received all that much attention here at TUAW. We can only assume that's because it simply does what it says on the tin -- it just works! But the other day, I found myself trying to do something quite simple on my Apple TV, and it wasn't "just working!" Using ...

AirDrop: Lion's new way to transfer files

by Steven Sande (Jul 21st, 2011)

One very cool new feature in OS X Lion is AirDrop. It's a way to leverage your home or office Wi-Fi network to send files to others who are also running Lion by just dragging and dropping those files onto an icon representing the other person. In this short post, I'll show you how AirDrop works ...