Messages is the built-in chat client included with OS X. You can use it to send text messages using iMessage, or one of many third-party messaging services. It can be cumbersome to compose text messages via iPhone, which makes Messages an excellent alternative to texting. It’s just like sending a normal text message, however you […]
EtreCheck – I love this app. It has many uses, including malware and adware removal. EtreCheck is a free tool that explains what is going on inside your Macintosh. EtreCheck consolidates information from over 50 different diagnostics tasks and displays it all on one concise report. EtreCheck can identify common problems like a failing hard […]
Apple introduced Mac OS X’s Spotlight 11 years ago – and it still doesn’t work very well. Luckily, many third-party companies have released file-search/app-launcher alternatives that work better. Here are three alternatives that I highly recommend. Quicksilver Find Any File EasyFind
Do you have crashed, corrupted or non-mounting hard drives? Was a hard drive accidentally reformatted? Do you need to recover previously deleted, damaged, or missing files? Enter Data Rescue I’ve worked with many different data recovery apps, and I’ve had the most luck with Data Rescue. It’s especially good at recovering files that were accidentally deleted. They have […]
Many software programs provide the incorrect bit rate of audio files. For example, iTunes will display the current bit rate of a file, but the file may have been previously compressed down to a much lower value. This misleading process is known as upscaling. Enter Spek Spek helps analyze your audio files by showing their […]
Apple’s Spotlight desktop search program has been around for over 10 years (since Mac OS X v10.4), and still continues to be one of the worst search engines for Mac OS X. One would think that the actual OS developer would be able to create the best search software – unfortunately, that’s not the case. Spotlight […]
CheatSheet – Know Your Shortcuts Just hold the ⌘-Key a bit longer to get a list of all active short cuts of the current application. It’s as simple as that. And, it’s free.
While iOS 8 has been out for a few months, many are still using iOS 7. If you are one of those iOS 7 users and plan to upgrade, there is one “gotcha” during the upgrade process that you must avoid – iCloud Drive. During the process, do not upgrade to iCloud Drive. If you do, you […]
Here’s a little drum template I made, for all you Ableton users. It routes one MIDI track to separate output tracks (kick, snare, etc.), via velocity restrictions. Each output track has a drum rack, so you can load a bunch of kicks, snares, etc. The cool part is the Scale plugin on the primary MIDI […]
I’m starting a new blog series called Apple (alt)ernatives, where I’ll feature better options to Apple products and software. This week, let’s take a look at media players. Instead of QuickTime and iTunes, use VLC Media Player. It supports countless file types, offers many more options, has built-in conversion software, and … it’s free! So, […]