OS X

Apple’s ‘El Capitan’ European trademark filing confusingly includes tablets

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 3, 2015

Is Apple really readying an iPad that could run both iOS and OS X? The toaster-refrigerator dilemma has been occupying the collective mind of fans who have been keeping their fingers crossed for the convergence of the Mac and iPad ever since the original iPad debuted more than five years ago.

Apple's European trademark filing for ‘El Capitan’ is certainly intriguing, to say the least, as it mentions tablets as one of the devices targeted by the desktop operating system, as revealed yesterday by Patently Apple.

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How to force quit a Mac app

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated November 1, 2024
Force Quit window on Mac

In this tutorial, we go over four ways to force quit apps on Mac so you can close an app that is misbehaving, is frozen or unresponsive, or has monopolized system resources and is slowing down your computer.

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Apple posts OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 with Wi-Fi fixes, Mail and Photos improvements and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 30, 2015

In addition to the new iOS 8.4 software update with a redesigned Music app, Beats 1 radio and Apple Music for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, Apple also released the free OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 software update for Macs.

In addition to various other big fixes, enhancements and nice-to-haves, this release of OS X Yosemite gets rid of the dreaded “discoveryd” network process which was responsible for a range of network issues, marking the return of the old but way more reliable “mDNSResponder” process.

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How to encrypt Time Machine backups

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated February 25, 2016

In our second Time Machine tutorial, we're going to show you how to encrypt a Time Machine backup. Encrypting your backups is extremely easy and straightforward. All you need to do is select a single check box in order to enable encryption and enter a password. In this tutorial, we'll show you how to do it, and why you should consider encrypting your backups.

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How to mute tabs in Safari on your Mac

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated March 1, 2023

Like pinned tabs, tab muting isn't a new idea, as it's been implemented in other web browsers in the past. But starting with OS X 10.11, Apple has brought native tab muting to the Safari browser.

The ability to mute tabs at will brings more control to the user. It's especially beneficial when encountering those annoying auto-playing advertisements.

In this video walkthrough, I'll show you how to use Safari tab muting, and explain its ins and outs.

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Is your Mac able to take advantage of OS X El Capitan’s Metal?

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 22, 2015

When OS X 10.11 El Capitan launches this fall, it will feature Metal, a graphics framework Apple originally introduced for iPhones, iPads and iPods following the release of iOS 8 last fall. In addition to making El Capitan's user interface and apps perform smoother than before, Metal for Mac is absolutely huge news for game developers and makers of graphics-intensive apps.

Like on iOS, El Capitan's Metal significantly reduces the overhead of graphics frameworks such as OpenGL by enabling low-level access to your Mac's graphics subsystem. Photo apps, games and video editing software like Adobe After Effects will experience up to ten times faster draw call performance by offloading certain tasks from the CPU onto the GPU.

But does your Mac sport modern hardware needed to support Metal's features? It's dead simple to determine this for yourself, here's how.

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Apple issues Mac App Store patch for XARA exploits as additional fixes are ‘in progress’

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 22, 2015

A cross application resource attack (XARA) that researchers at Indiana University, Georgia Tech and China’s Peking University publicized last week seems to have been partially addressed as Apple issued a server-side fix on the Mac App Store to block malicious apps and secure app data.

Additional fixes are in the works for the XARA exploits on both iOS and OS X, a company spokesperson told iMore. XARA exploits allow malicious apps to steal iCloud credentials of a user, access private data in apps like 1Password and Evernote, hijack their iCloud Keychain passwords and more.

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How to install beta software on a separate partition

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated January 29, 2024

Itching to run the latest macOS beta, but don't want to upgrade your primary Mac installation with a beta release? You'd be wise to carefully consider the prospects of running a beta release as a daily driver. That said, it is possible to run beta software on your primary machine without compromising your current installation.

By creating a small test partition on your primary drive, you can create a great landing space for the beta. Read and watch our walkthrough to see how easy it is.

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How to set up Time Machine on Mac OS X

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated February 25, 2016

Time Machine is a Mac utility that allows you to automate hourly, daily, and weekly backups on an external drive that's connected directly to your Mac or via a local network. It's seen as the first line of defense against data loss, and features simple setup.

Setting up Time Machine, in its most basic configuration, is extremely easy. All you need to do is launch the Time Machine preferences, turn on Time Machine, select a Backup Disk, and you're pretty much set.

Of course, there's much more to Time Machine than just the initial setup, but in this first post in our Time Machine tutorial series for OS X, we'll cover some of the basic set up options.

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Review: LaCie Rugged RAID 4TB external drive – a good choice for Mac?

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

For the past few weeks, I’ve been testing out the Neil Poulton designed LaCie Rugged RAID portable hard drive. This drive, with its can’t-miss color, is specifically designed to stand up to tough environments.

The Rugged RAID features a rubber non-slip casing that will help it absorb impacts and stand up to harsh conditions. In fact, it’s dust, water, and shock resistant. If you’re someone who travels with an external hard drive, then you’re automatically more susceptible to all three of these potential failure-inducing scenarios. This can make the LaCie drive an attractive prospect.

Not to be confused with similar-looking drives in the LaCie lineup, this Rugged RAID drive actually ships with two independent hard drives pre-configured with RAID 0 for a total of 4TB of space. This provides end users with lots of headroom and extremely fast read and write speeds.

But hard drive speed isn’t the only thing fast about this drive. The LaCie Rugged RAID is also equipped with a USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt connection for high speed I/O up to 240MB/s. Even better is the fact that the Thunderbolt connection is bus powered, which makes it easy to travel with.

Needless to say, I’ve had high expectations for this hard drive ever since it was first announced. Does the LaCie Rugged RAID live up to this OS X user’s expectations? Read and watch the full review to find out.

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How to remove unused language files from your Mac and free up disk space

Lory Gil ∙ Updated August 6, 2019

There are approximately 150 different localized languages coded into OS X. Most people only use one language on their computer, maybe two. That leaves hundreds of megabytes of space being used up by languages you will never access in your operating system.

Monolingual is a utility that allows you to remove many of the more than 150 foreign languages from your Mac, freeing up disk space for more important files. We've got a tutorial that explains how to download and use Monolingual to delete unnecessary language files, plus a couple of very important tips to follow before completing the process.

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