Howto Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Mac 101: Upgrade to SSD

by Shawn Boyd (May 14th, 2013)

If you are looking for a way to get more out of your MacBook or MacBook Pro, consider a solid-state drive (SSD). SSDs offer faster data read and write speeds, fast file transfers, speedier boot times and will save you some battery life. In the past, SSDs were considered somewhat pricey upgrades ...

Add a clone partition to your backup drive

by Shawn Boyd (Apr 9th, 2013)

In case you missed it, March 31st was World Backup Day, a big topic of discussion on the last few Talkcasts, which culminated in a visit by the team at Dolly Drive. Inspired by the conversation, I wanted to create a clone-sized partition to mirror my SSD. I had an extra external drive on my desk ...

Can I Stream It makes movie night simpler

by Shawn Boyd (Apr 5th, 2013)

The way we watch movies and television is evolving, as more people adopt on-demand video. But still, the old question remains: "What's on that's worth watching?" The free web service Can I Stream It can help provide an answer. It lets you search for your favorite shows and movies to see if ...

How to spring clean "Open With" duplicates

by Shawn Boyd (Mar 25th, 2013)

If you use your Mac for any period of time, you will find the need to open a document with a different program other than the one set as default. The "Open With" menu appears in the Finder whenever you right-click or control-click on the icon of a document. The "Open With" command is designed ...

A better Google search experience with Choosy, Keyboard Maestro and Fluid

by TJ Luoma (Feb 19th, 2013)

There are so, so many things that annoy me about Google: Google can remember everything about me except that I want my search results to open in a new window. Google crappifies search results, so that instead of giving me a link to the site that it shows me, it actually gives ...

Mac 101: Use Automator to extract text from PDFs

by Matt Tinsley (Feb 11th, 2013)

More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice (and expert) Mac users. Have you every tried to copy and paste text from a PDF into a word processor document like Pages or Microsoft Word? Most of the time the text loses all its formatting from the PDF, which can be a real pain. Too often I've spent ...

iTunes 101: Making playlists in iTunes 11

by Megan Lavey-Heaton (Feb 7th, 2013)

If you've messed around with iTunes 11 in default view, you'll notice that creating a playlist has changed. If you have the sidebar turned on to make iTunes 11 look like earlier versions, creating a playlist is much the same as it was. But, if you have the sidebar turned off, Apple's Inside ...

Use Transmit to create 'quick upload' droplets

by TJ Luoma (Dec 4th, 2012)

Transmit by Panic is one of my favorite apps. If you ever move files from one computer to another, you owe it to yourself to test this one out. Today I want to highlight a feature called "Save To Droplet" which is not new, but is very handy. However, it's not immediately obvious how to use ...

Setting up Mountain Lion: 12 geek setup tips

by Erica Sadun (Nov 28th, 2012)

After I recently wrote about how I often set up new Macs from scratch rather than taking advantage of migration, many people asked me to share my action logs. While I can't do that specifically because (1) my logs are extremely long and cryptic and (2) they contain tons of personal activation keys ...

Merging Apple IDs still not possible. Now what?

by TJ Luoma (Oct 1st, 2012)

TUAW reader Glenn Thorpe wrote about Apple ID problems: "I recently upgraded to iOS 6 as recommended and I am now faced with some challenges when using FaceTime and Messages. "My Apple ID account which I use to download apps cannot be used for FaceTime nor Messages. I had to create new ...

Mac 101: Restricting Web Access

by TJ Luoma (Sep 17th, 2012)

TUAW reader Adam wrote in with the following question: Today, I am in the process of upgrading our iMac for another product, likely a MacBook Pro with external display this time. I am wrestling with the idea of putting the old iMac in my daughter's study area for use. My question is this: ...

Mac 101: Battery not charging? Recalibration may be the answer

by TJ Luoma (Aug 20th, 2012)

If your MacBook (any model) is not charging to 100%, it may need to be recalibrated. Apple explains how to do this, but basically it comes down to three steps: Fully charge your MacBook (and leave it charged for about 2 hours) Fully drain your MacBook (by using it on battery until it ...

Mountain Lion 101: Silencing Notification Center alerts

by Dave Caolo (Aug 7th, 2012)

Mountain Lion's Notification Center is handy. It displays banners and alerts from notification-aware apps to keep you informed of changes, like a new Twitter mention, Calendar event or email message. That last one can get distracting, depending on how much email you receive. Here are some ways to ...

Building an OS X Mountain Lion installer thumb drive

by Erica Sadun (Jul 25th, 2012)

Last year, I posted about creating a standalone Lion USB installer thumb drive. This year, I update those instructions for Mountain Lion. You'll need a copy of the OS X Mountain Lion installer. If you saved a copy when you first installed Mountain Lion, great. If not, you'll need to re-download ...

iPhone 101: Switching sound off (or down)

by Erica Sadun (Jul 23rd, 2012)

Today's iPhone 101 is all about audio volume. You may think that the volume toggle and the mute switch on the side of your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch are the beginning and end of noise control, but it turns out there's more to the iOS sound story. You can get some volume management by ...