Written by: hexley on Saturday January 09th 2010, 1:12 am
To explain how the past ten to fifteen years of computing history has happened would make for an interesting post. If there is one simple concept to take away, it is that in the past, computing power was not at a premium.
Feel free to skip this article and jump right into ordering your copy of Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 right now.
Software developers were extremely bound by the speed of the hardware that their applications were to be deployed on. In many cases, 100’s of man hours were put into optimizing the smallest of features, in order to fit a program into a space of memory that is a smaller than an inexpensive thumb drive.
Those days are over. There is significantly more CPU speed available to users than most will need. Casual web browsing, checking email, and other basic computing tasks take only a fraction of the CPU speed we have available to us. As an example, an iPhone has more CPU power than that of the first generation of iMac’s that began Apple’s return from the abyss of a negative balance sheet.
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Written by: Caroline Merchiers on Wednesday May 14th 2008, 12:46 am
Here’s a useful little tip. OS X actually has a separate dictionary program, other than Dictionary.app, that will quickly give you the definition of a word without leaving the application you are currently working in. Most modern applications support this in OS X, though some older applications may not be able to take advantage of the pop up dictionary. Some of you may be aware of this little gem, and others will probably be pleasantly surprised, just as I was when I found out about it.
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Written by: hexley on Tuesday April 15th 2008, 5:52 am
With OS X Leopard 10.5, Apple brought forward a pretty strange change to the menu bar. The main menu bar had a mandatory translucency applied. This meant you could see your desktop image through the menu bar.
The internets were quite upset about this “feature”. In my opinion, rightly so.
Luckily, so much noise was made about the change, that as long as you have ran your software updates, you can finally turn this “feature” off.
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Written by: hexley on Sunday April 13th 2008, 7:03 pm
A few days ago, one of our readers sent in an email asking if I had any idea why Internet Explorer would not load web pages in his installation of Virtual PC. Every now and then I will take an interest in a users problems and see if I can not help them troubleshoot the issue.
We had a few rounds of email, over the course of a few days, in the end, I was unable to help. A solution was found, but not by myself, rather the user figured it out on their own. The solution was simple, and one I usually try as a first step, as should everyone. This time, it never crossed my mind, as I wrongfully assumed the user would also try this method as a first step.
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Written by: hexley on Wednesday April 02nd 2008, 3:17 am
Every now and then, you are writing and will get stumped on how to spell a word. Perhaps you know the beginning letters, and not the ending letters. Or perhaps you just want some hints.
OS X has a built in system for pulling words out of its dictionary, and showing you a list of those words. While not something I use all the time, it can be handy once you learn how to access it.
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Written by: hexley on Sunday March 30th 2008, 5:43 am
As Apple says, “opening files is so 2006″, we tend to agree. As our first post to the quick tips section, otherwise known as the Little Smokies category; we will explore just a little of Quick Look.
Quick Look saves time. For every file on your computer, if you want to view the contents of the file, you have to open the file. You then have to wait for it’s parent application to launch, and finally, you get to see what is in the file.
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Written by: Caroline Merchiers on Saturday March 29th 2008, 10:25 pm
As a kid, we would have family gatherings; one of the standard food items were these small mini hotdogs. They are called Little Smokies, or at least, that is what my family always called them.
To this day, I love the Little Smokies; a favorite treat for me every time I have them. They are tiny, quick, simple, and quite awesome.
In that spirit, we are adding a new category to OS X Help; Little Smokies.
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