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This post is part of a series that revisits some of our readers’ favorite articles from the past that still contain awesome and relevant information that you might find useful. This post was originally published on April 19th, 2010.
GeekTool is a really neat preference panel that allows widget-like functionality on a highly customizable level.
Unfortunately, if you aren’t particularly geeky, this app can be a bit confusing to get up and running. Luckily enough, here at AppStorm there’s definitely no shortage of geeks such as myself to help you out! I’ll take you step by step through finding and installing scripts to make your desktop the envy of the office.
The latest iteration of the Macbook Air was released this year and it caught my attention immediately. It was such a beautiful device. I found myself going to the Apple Store website over and over to look at pictures and mull over the specs.
I felt like this version of the Air covered almost all of the shortcomings I saw with previous versions. In fact, it was a more powerful machine than my current Macbook. The one factor that kept making me hesitate was the hard drive size. Would it be enough for me and for future growth? Can I work around the limitation? Should I work around that limitation? These were the questions bouncing around in my head. I decided the constraint would be a good thing and I’d figure out ways to work around it as needed. Enter TuneSpan.
Disk Utility is an application that’s built into OS X that can perform lots of useful and even scary actions. Experienced users find frequent need of this handy tool but those newer to the Mac experience are often cautioned to steer clear, for good reason.
Today we’re going to take a very brief look at what Disk Utility is, when you should use it and how to avoid erasing important information while doing so.
When I was a kid playing around on my first Mac, I always thought it was loads of fun to have the computer read out whatever I’d written in KidPix (remember KidPix?). On my grown-up Macbook, I sometimes set up spoken alarms and alerts, so that I can imagine Stephen Hawking is telling me what time it is.
However, if you want to convert longer passages of text to speech, you might be in for some quality time with the command line (more on that later). There’s a decent amount of professional text-to-speech software out there, but it’s generally expensive, and mostly intended for business use or for people with disabilities. Today we’re going to go over some free and inexpensive options, and learn how to convert text to speech using TextEdit or the Terminal.
CopyPaste Pro, from the developer Plum Amazing, describes itself as “Time Machine for your clipboard” and is designed to give a much-needed refresh to this simple, yet vital feature. There are plenty of features built in which not only bring some added functionality to moving text around but also some useful little perks which may help you become more productive by helping you to save time.
Let’s have a look to see what features CopyPaste Pro gives you and how it can be a radical change to the way you work.
Though Time Machine is a very useful and simple to use backup utility, it is sound practice to not put all your digital eggs into one basket. Further, when you upgrade your hard drive, cloning the old drive makes for a completely seamless transition to the new one. All of your passwords, apps, files, etc. will be right where you expect them to be.
I’d like to show you how to use the Shareware (uncrippled, unlimited demo) program Carbon Copy Cloner to back up your files. Using Carbon Copy Cloner is a little more involved than Time Machine but the benefit of making an exact, bootable duplicate is well worth the extra effort.
Have you ever been using a website, or one of your less-than-favourite Mac apps, and found yourself needing to write a long essay, letter or work with some text? Hated being constrained to writing e-mails on gmail.com, or typing your blog post into the cluttered WordPress panel?
It’s a common complaint, and there’s nothing worse than writing in an environment that doesn’t feel natural. I was there myself just a few days ago. That is, until I ran across QuickCursor.
Alarm clock apps are a difficult topic, as some people are averse to paying for an app that does something that their cellphones and clocks do. While I don’t quite use alarm apps on an everyday basis, I do find them attractive and convenient because they put in your hands a bunch of settings and options that regular alarm clocks don’t have.
Also, they have access to your complete music library, so you can wake up every day to your latest album or playlist. Today we are presenting an alarm clock app that goes along with your Mac perfectly, as it is very pretty, and remarkably simple to use. It’s called Aurora.
With the Mac App Store open and business booming for Apple developers, it’s easy to get into the habit of grabbing a bunch of useful third-party applications to handle your computing needs. While there’s nothing wrong with doing this, you may find yourself surprised at just how powerful some of OS X’s built-in tools are.
The next stop on our quest to help you make the best of your Mac is Stickies, the surprisingly powerful built-in notes application that you may not be using to the full potential, if at all!
Let’s fix that, shall we?
We’ve covered Alfred quite a bit here on AppStorm, but I wanted to take some time today to showcase a few features that you might not have come across before. I used to be the type of person that loved to have an application launcher, but only ever used it for – you guessed it – launching apps!
Although Alfred does give you a fantastic way to open software using just your keyboard, it goes well beyond that fairly basic functionality. Today we’ll take a look at a few more advanced techniques, and show you how powerful this simple piece of software really is…
