Category: Reviews-HowTos

If you troubleshoot Macs on a regular basis, sooner or later, you’re going to need an old Mac OS X install CD or DVD. Only the truly organized will be able to locate that Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard DVD they last used two moves ago. For those of you looking to find a way to replace your old Mac OS X install discs, we’d like to offer the following suggestions.

eBay

You’ll find it all on eBay, albeit not at the best possible prices. Like any commodity that’s not being produced anymore, original Mac OS X installation CDs and DVDs are being kept, hoarded, and sold at impressive profits. Remember when Apple routinely insisted that $129 was a reasonable amount to jump from Mac OS X 10.3 to 10.4? Well, the person who kept their boxed installation disc would like to see their money back—and it’s going to come out of your pocket.

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When the power grid is close at hand, most smartphones and tablets have no problem lasting through a full day. But take that plentiful electricity away, and keeping our gadgets going becomes more difficult—despite many recent advancements, battery technology hasn’t kept up with our constant need for more power. And given that these days we’re taking our gear to more—and more-remote—places than ever before, having enough durable power is even more of a challenge.

Of course, some will argue that taking technology camping, for example, is silly when you’re trying to escape the trappings of city life. But a mobile phone can, quite literally, be a lifesaver in an emergency, and portable power does more than keep your iPhone running longer, since all sorts of devices, from radios to hand warmers to flashlights, can use a USB port as a source of power. Even in an urban setting, you want to be sure your mobile devices continue to work when the power goes out, especially given the ever-quicker demise of landline communications.

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The basic Calculator app that comes with iOS is good for simple calculations, and if you rotate your phone into landscape orientation, it even provides some rudimentary scientific-calculator functions. But if it’s a full-featured scientific calculator you seek—or if you’d just like a great calculator for your iPad, which inexplicably doesn’t include one—you’ll want to look elsewhere.

My personal favorite remains TLA Systems’s $10 PCalc (App Store link). It’s overflowing with features, including scientific operations, conversions, constants, and even user-defined functions. And you get it all in an interface that can look as simple or complete, and as modern or retro, as you prefer.

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In a recent article you said that you couldn’t play movies stored on a flash drive on your iPad. Is there any way at all to use other kinds of files on a flash drive with an iPad?

In a very limited way, yes. It’s like this.

You can attach some flash drives to Apple’s $29 iPad Camera Connection Kit. (If you have an iPad with a Lightning connector you’ll additionally need Apple’s $29 Lightning to USB Camera Adapter.) Let me underscore some. Some flash drives require more power than the iPad can provide and won’t work. For example, I had luck with a low-capacity (64MB) flash drive but a 4GB drive was deemed incompatible by the iPad.

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A recent surge of worthy new email clients offers Mac users some of the best choices they’ve ever had for managing their mail. With a panoply of clever features and new ideas, these contenders have also mounted a serious challenge to the relatively stagnant Apple Mail and Microsoft Outlook. But with so may options to choose from, it’s now even harder to pick out the best email client for your particular needs. We’ve found one strong program that offers a great mix of features, usability, and value for a broad swath of users, plus several more that will cater well to more specialized preferences.

Top choice: Postbox 3

Postbox 3 () isn’t the newest or sleekest candidate in this roundup. Its design hews more closely to the traditional Mac look and feel, rather than adopting a slick iOS-like appearance. But for $10, it combines reliable performance, smart design, and a wide array of impressive features that make the program feel like what Apple Mail ought to be.

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Shay is stuck on a spaceship that’s smothering him in cozy, childish comfort. Vella’s not wild about her family’s plans to sacrifice her to a giant monster in order to save their village. Though they live in different worlds, both are growing up and rebelling against the expectations set for them. But neither suspects what’s really going on around them.

That’s the inspired premise for Broken Age, born from one of gaming’s most successful Kickstarter campaigns. Production delays mean that only its first half is available now, with a promise of a free update adding the rest later this year. But even incomplete, Broken Age tells a fantastic, funny, thought-provoking story.

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When I’m not writing about apps, OS X, or iOS, I play roller derby with Boston’s all-star travel team. We’re currently ranked 16th in the world, which is pretty exciting—but it also means practicing and scrimmaging at an extremely high level, three to four days a week. And as anyone who has played a contact sport can attest, your body can get a little beaten up after just a few weeks.

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Whether it’s an Instagram snap or a film portrait, black and white photography is never out of style. Today, there are a number of ways to create monochrome images: Most digital cameras offer a special black and white setting, and there are plenty of special filters and software plug-ins that can de-colorize your photo for a stunning monochrome look. While it sometimes takes a little extra time, it’s best to capture an image in color since color images contain more data to work with and can make your end result more pleasing to the eye. Additionally, you’ll always have a color version of the photo to share or print.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 offers several ways to convert images to black and white. For this tutorial, I’m using the app’s Convert to Black and White feature. It’s quick, easy, and produces great results.

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You, as generous parent, have given your child an iPod touch. Problem is, they spend all their time on the thing texting their friends when they could so more important things like their homework. You could, of course, just pull the thing out of their hands, but if you connect to the Internet via an AirPort Base Station try this instead.

First, grab hold of their device and go to Settings > General > About. Scroll down and look for the Wi-Fi Address entry. This is the hardware address (or MAC address) that’s unique to that device. Write it down.

Now launch AirPort Utility, select the AirPort Base Station that’s connected to your broadband modem (in the video I misspoke and said “router,” but that’s incorrect as the Base Station is the router in this case). Click Edit. Click on the Network tab and then enable the Enable Access Control option. Now click the Timed Access Control button. In the sheet that appears click on the Plus button to add a wireless client. Give your kid’s iPod a name and then enter its MAC address in this field. Now configure the pop-up menus for those days and times wireless access is allowed—so maybe for an hour or two after they come home from school during the week and a few hours on the weekend.

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Laptops are often used like desktop computers, with external devices such as displays, hard drives, and printers plugged into the ports. When you need to use your laptop as a mobile device, you have to spend time plugging and unplugging those devices—a simple task, but an annoying, time-consuming one.

Laptop docks allow you to plug all your devices into the dock itself. You then connect the laptop to the dock, usually using a cable or two. No more dealing with a bunch of cables you have to unplug, untangle, and plug back in. (These docks can also be used with Thunderbolt-enabled desktop Macs—our testing with desktop Macs went without a hitch. But desktop Macs tend to have the connectivity you need, which makes a dock unnecessary.)

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I can do a lot on my iOS devices. I can read and send email, surf the Web, watch videos, play games, write articles—it’d probably be faster to compose a list of the things I can’t do. Still, for all of that, I haven’t gotten rid of my Macs, and sometimes I need to access my Macs from my iOS devices. That’s when I turn to Edovia’s Screens.

Screens is, simply put, the best screen sharing app for iOS, and I’ve used it to do any number of somewhat silly things; for example, when I realize that I forgot to enable a service on one of my Macs or failed to put some critical document into Dropbox. And Screens has handled each and every one of those tasks with aplomb. It’s as close as you can get to sitting in front of your Mac while not actually sitting in front of your Mac. (Yes, it even works for Windows and Linux users too.)

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Pay a visit to Victorinox’s website, and you’ll find that the manufacturer of the legendary Swiss Army Knife offers models with as few as seven implements, as as many as 80. Neither is right for everyone.

Similarly, Mac utilities can range from do-a-couple-handy-things apps to do-everything-under-the-sun software. Software Ambience Corp’s $5 Unclutter (Mac App Store link) falls into the former group. It provides just three tools: a clipboard history, a place to stash files, and a simple notes area—all accessible from your Mac’s menu bar.

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