tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-303981902011-04-21T21:44:18.768-07:00Dedicated to tuning, optimizing and getting the most out of your Mac and the OS X operating system. I cover Mac applications, utilities, techniques and hacks that I personally find useful or intriguing.Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01480922631395210094noreply@blogger.comBlogger131100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30398190.post-33310420286195630802007-01-10T11:10:00.000-08:002007-01-10T11:47:26.505-08:00

iPhone was huge news yesterday. I was on the edge of my seat watching all the updates on Engadget as Mr. Steve Jobs revealed all the succulent details of the phone. Curious as to what the media was saying on the phone, I read several sources, from the New York Times, to the local free dailies, Metro and 24. Some of them even called the phone/device/mp3-player "revolutionary".But the descriptions

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01480922631395210094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30398190.post-1163573690678476092006-11-14T22:19:00.000-08:002006-11-15T15:06:30.414-08:00

There are many ways to manage your to-do items, including Apple Mail, and Microsoft (gasp) Entourage. If you want to access a complicated list from anywhere, you could even use a free wiki. However, if you mainly review your To-Do items from one location, an efficient method is to maintain a text file named todo.txt. Why a text file? Because it's easy to use, and you can edit it in a number of

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01480922631395210094noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30398190.post-1159904927853440752006-10-03T12:48:00.000-07:002006-11-15T15:06:30.316-08:00

Ever had a friend who wants to use your computer, but they are not Mac-savvy? Perhaps even *gasp* Windows users? Here are some steps to take to prepare for a situation like this.First, set up a new account for "Guest". In that account, set up shortcuts on the desktop to anything that a guest may want to use -- most likely Firefox, and (God forbid) MS Word. Remove everything from the dock and

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01480922631395210094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30398190.post-1159129556276530872006-09-24T13:21:00.000-07:002006-11-15T15:06:30.213-08:00

AppZapper is a really easy to use Uninstall program.As you know, uninstalling a program on the Mac is easy enough - just drag the application icon into the trash. But often you are left with preference files, caches, etc. AppZapper will find those for you too, and with a click of a button, move them all to the trash at once.The shareware price is a deal at $12, but the software isn't perfect, and

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01480922631395210094noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30398190.post-1159129229721936172006-09-24T13:12:00.000-07:002006-11-15T15:06:30.124-08:00

I rarely use Spotlight any more, since QuickSilver does such a fabulous job of finding files on my computer. But unlike Quicksilver, Spotlight searches an underused file property (or should I say Info) that users may access by highlighting a file and pressing the CMD-I. Notice the first field is called Spotlight Comments? It never even occured to me what that field is for, but you can add

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01480922631395210094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30398190.post-1154419591642871112006-08-01T00:57:00.000-07:002006-11-15T15:06:30.019-08:00

QuickSilver gives you great power, if you want to cue up an ongoing song list. Let's say you're listening to your party shuffle, and you have the urge to listen to Queen's Greatest Hits, but you don't want to switch out of Party Shuffle mode. No problem! With QuickSilver, you can cue up any track, album, or a whole discography, into Party Shuffle, and have it continue on with the mix when your

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01480922631395210094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30398190.post-1154417341071060782006-08-01T00:19:00.000-07:002006-11-15T15:06:29.935-08:00

One of the biggest productivity boosters in QuickSilver is the ability to use Triggers. Triggers can be, well, triggered from key combinations, mouse gestures (if you have the Abracadabra plugin loaded), or mouse clicks (with the Mouse Triggers plugin loaded).If you have the User Interface Access plugin loaded, and I recommend doing so, you'll be able to use any Menu item from any application as

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01480922631395210094noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30398190.post-1154203058260022912006-07-29T12:41:00.000-07:002006-11-15T15:06:29.834-08:00

Complete... that's a rare state around here! But after months of tweaking, rating songs, and trying different iTunes utilities, iTunes is working seamlessly and effortlessly.The biggest challenge was to rate all of my music. I have almost 50 gigs, so leaving iTunes on Party Shuffle makes sense. Shuffle has an option to play higher rated songs more often, so this is the main point to rating your

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01480922631395210094noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30398190.post-1152845222318538412006-07-13T19:30:00.000-07:002006-11-15T15:06:29.719-08:00

Everybody I know has probably heard me mention QuickSilver at some point. No other application exists that has as much buzz, while being nearly impossible to describe. While you could just install it and poke around, I'll try to outline some cool things that you can do with it, and as I find ways to make my workflow more efficient, I will share those tips with you.The first thing you need to do

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01480922631395210094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30398190.post-1152244154113489402006-07-06T20:23:00.000-07:002006-11-15T15:06:29.610-08:00

In a previous post, I talked about the ideal way to view your RSS feeds, and already there are some new options out there. But I neglected to explain what RSS really is, or how it works. If you aren't aware, this post is for you.RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (and used to stand for Rich Site Summary). It's delivered by a mark-up language - XML - and its purpose is to summarizes new web

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01480922631395210094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30398190.post-1151717188058583552006-06-30T17:15:00.000-07:002006-11-15T15:06:29.472-08:00

RSS feeds are a fantastic way to quickly see the latest news from your favourite sites, without having to check those sites frequently. Safari supports RSS natively, and Firefox and some other browsers support news reader extensions, but I prefer to use a web-based aggregator called News Gator Online, set to my homepage. It's free, and does a great job of displaying content. As you would expect,

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01480922631395210094noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30398190.post-1151527254413020872006-06-28T13:27:00.000-07:002006-11-15T15:06:29.344-08:00

Over time, one tends to build up a huge collection of bookmarks. Using my .mac account, I used to sync my bookmarks where I used to work with the ones at home, so if an interesting page caught my eye at work, I could check it out later without having to send myself a link. But after a while, the amount of bookmarks you have to manage is overwhelming, and a particular bookmark can get lost among

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01480922631395210094noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30398190.post-1151513540096876932006-06-28T09:43:00.000-07:002006-11-15T15:06:29.232-08:00

Welcome to The Mac Tuner, a(nother) blog dedicated to getting the most out of Mac OS X operating system. Here I chronicle my experiences with utilities, applications, and hacks that make my life easier.A little profile on myself: I'm a freelancing graphic designer who also dabbles in web design. I work from home, and spend practically every minute at, or near, my Mac - a 2.5 year old PowerMac G5

Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01480922631395210094noreply@blogger.com0