The simple way to switch from Mail to Gmail
One nice thing about Mail is the Redirect feature, which lets you forward mail to a particular address so that it does not appear to have been forwarded from you. The final recipient sees the message just as you did when it arrived in your inbox.
One annoying thing about Mail’s Redirect feature is that it cannot be used on more than one message at a time. You can’t select, say, the entire contents of one mailbox and tell Mail to redirect all those messages to your Gmail account. If you select more than one message, the Redirect menu item is unusable. Here's the solution.
Apple's release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard build 9A410 to third-party developers late last week arrived on the heals of the company's announcement that Leopard's release would be delayed until October. While many changes are contained in this build, many bugs remain. Here are some visuals.
Apple issued the following statement: "The iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned.
Work on Apple's next major operating system continues to plod along with the release of a new build of Leopard to developers this week.
Let’s say you’re reading an article online, and you read a sentence that you want to email to a friend. Don’t do the copy-and-paste thing. Instead, just highlight the text and drag-and-drop it right on the Mail icon in the Dock. It will open Mail and put that sentence into a new mail message.
Mac software is usually distributed in a way that encourages simple drag-and-drop installation. Uninstallation in such cases requires dragging the same file to the Trash. Google doesn’t use such a simple method nor does it use Apple’s standard installer. 
So you've made the switch to Mac, but kept your old PC, and now you've got both connected to your home router. How do you access your Windows files from OS X? Sure you could set up an FTP or SSH server, but that's overkill for a regular home network. Turns out that Mac OS X can connect to Windows shared folders very easily. Read on to find out how.
Jason writes: "With the arrival of my Apple TV yesterday I needed a solution to get my Xvix/WMV/Divx files converted and imported into iTunes so that I can watch them. I already have Quicktime Pro, which with the recent release added the ability to “Export to Apple TVâ€. Since I have a lot of files, and no desire to sit around and convert these one at a time, it seemed like a perfect job for Automator."
There have been a lot of rumors lately from "unconfirmed" sources about Leopard's expected ship date. For a while, everyone was sure it was going to ship mid-to-late March. Then mysteriously, the ship date (according to these anonymous sources) got shifted to mid-April—perhaps because we are already in late March. Oops. Developers who work closely with Apple have been dying to tell the world how very, very wrong we all are.
Ed Eubanks writes: "Every now and then, my Macs begin to feel a little sluggish. There are many potential reasons why: I tend to run 8-10 applications all the time - and sometimes push 15 or more. This alone will bog down any Mac. When those don't speed things up, I've found a number of things I can do to encourage my Macs back to their youthful snappiness. Here are a few tips I've found for restoring my Macs to full speed without spending a penny."
In this howto, the author will show you some things he has done to secure OS X beyond it’s default settings. There are very basic, and some advanced things in here.
Hard drives have a way of filling up—especially laptop drives. Install OS X and your favorite apps, and then add your music collection, photos, and videos—and that space can disappear in a flash. If you can’t get a larger hard drive for your portable Mac, the easiest way to get more storage space is to get rid of stuff you don’t need. To start the process, consider the following suggestions.
Encryption can be used to keep the contents of the email safe from prying eyes. It can also be used to certify that the message a person receives was actually issued by the individual listed in the messages from field. Email encryption is a complicated process that is simply convoluted for the average computer user. Mac users are no exception, so 
Pierre Igot writes: "Mac OS X’s Mail has a pretty long history of sheer idiocy when it comes to sending e-mail messages. But there is one aspect that has always been particularly irritating to me, not just as a Mail user myself, but as someone who provides Mac tech support services to other Mail users."
To replace the swirly blue background image that normally appears behind the login window, simply replace the Aqua Blue.jpg file stored in /Library/Desktop Pictures with an image of your own. If the file isn’t named properly, or the file type is wrong, you’ll see a solid blue screen instead of your custom image.
When you create a new empty folder in OS X (Shift-Command-N), it’s created with the name untitled folder. With just a bit of mucking about in the Finder’s internals, you can set the default name for new folders to anything you like.
In a nutshell, a Smart Folder contains items in the folder based on search criteria that you set in the preferences of the folder instead of grouping the contained items by location, like a regular folder. This makes it very easy to better organize your Mac. Say, for example, that you have a lot of word documents or keynote presentations spread out in different folders on your Mac but you want to get them all in one location without physically moving them on the hard drive, then making a smart folder is your solution.
If you’ve spent time in Terminal, more than likely you’ve made a typo or two—or two hundred thousand, if your typing accuracy is anything like mine! It’s one of the banes of working in Unix—after years of point-and-click, having to type sometimes long and complex commands by hand leads to inaccuracies. And, sad to say, Terminal isn’t nearly as lenient with my typos as are Word and my other text editors!
If you believe all the hype, installing the new Windows Vista operating system will solve world famine, end the AIDS crisis and bring about world peace. Well, maybe no one is saying it's that great, but the clamor and fuss have been pretty boisterous. Hidden behind all of this hoopla, however, is the fact that as much of an improvement Vista is over XP, its main competitor, Mac OS X, still stacks up really well - and even tops Vista in several important areas.
Apple has apparently been developing an operating system based on the core technologies of Mac OS X for use with embedded devices. Apple intends to integrate the software on a couple of devices beginning early next year, those people say, while more comprehensive plans call for it to form the bedrock of a jaw-dropping device not due to hit the market until the following year.
Adam Knight writes: "It's a matter of seeing who is starting what and why, but almost everything can be changed if you work hard enough. First, ask yourself if this is something you need to do. Most services that aren't active have been paged out and just the run loop portion of the code is in memory and running, which isn't that bad of a tax on the CPU. If you're doing it to do it, don't."
If you’re sending a handful of files to another Mac user they should go in a clean-looking DMG volume. There’s no easier way to look polished and professional. The video is here.
Daniel Jalkut writes: "Today I’d like to highlight an infuriating behavior that iTunes has, of blocking the processing of all incoming AppleEvents while its preferences dialog is being displayed. What does this mean in most practical terms? iTunes can’t respond to AppleScript while the Preferences window is open."
If you take a lot of photos, having them organized on your workstation may be a challenge. Fortunately, there are bloggers out there with the same problem and one of them wrote a good article on the subject so do check it out. He also provides some sound advice on backup, I like the man! :)
Paul Burd writes: "After setting up the account through my host, and setting up the IMAP account in Apple’s Mail, I found that items weren’t being synced as they should. Anything I did through the webmail client did show up in Mail, but things I did in Mail did NOT show up in the webmail client." Read on for helpful hints.
Apple issued a bundle of updates to fix at least 15 different security holes in its Mac OS X software applications. Mac OS X v10.4.8 and Security Update 2006-006 corrects flaws in OS X Mac OS X v10.3.9, Mac OS X Server v10.3.9, Mac OS X v10.4 through Mac OS X v10.4.7, and Mac OS X Server v10.4 through Mac OS X Server v10.4.7. 
Mac OS X contains a suite of technologies, including the Accessibility API, for creating assistive technology solutions. With Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger, adding support for accessibility to your application is easier than ever. This two-part article is intended to help you add accessibility to your Cocoa application.
Time Machine is one of the exciting features in the upcoming new Mac OS X release Leopard. With Time Machine not only can you back up and preserve everything on your Mac - including priceless digital photos, music, movies, and documents - without lifting a finger, you can go back in time to recover anything you’ve ever backed up. Time Machine is not something people will be able to use out of the box. You need an external hard drive or an iPod to make it work.
Do you like to know what’s going on “under the hood†of your Mac (stuff like your CPU usage, disk activity, memory usage - you know, total geek stuff)? If you do, you can keep an eye on things right from within the dock using Mac OS X’s Activity Monitor.
According to informants inside the Cupertino-based computer giant, the next version of Apple's operating system will let you track belongings through clever GPS and integrated mapping.
People familiar with recent builds of the software say VoIP Internet dialing is just one of several new features in iChat 4.0, which Apple is expected to bundle with Leopard. The move will pit the Apple-branded video conferencing and instant message software against existing VoIP solutions from the likes of Skype, Google and Microsoft.
Derrick Story writes: "Many Mac OS X Tiger users don't realize that they have a powerful RAW converter bundled with their operating system. Every 10.4 Mac comes with a handy application called Preview that most folks think of only as a PDF viewer. Even Apple touts its PDF capabilities without going into much detail about its hidden powers. The most notable of these lesser known features is Preview's ability to decode RAW files and convert them to other formats."
Here is a list of short tips on using various UNIX tools under Mac OS X. Some of them are also applicable to other flavors of UNIX.
Through no fault of your own, your Mac may one day decide not to work, displaying anything from odd behaviour to a truculent refusal to do pretty much anything. Don't be tempted to reach straight for the phone and book it in for a spot of expensive repair; try these two simple steps first. They solve most problems with Mac OS X.
James Duncan Davidson writes: "While sitting in the back of the room at the Portland Rails Studio, I poked up my hand during Getting Started section of the day. Dave was discussing setting up your database for a Rails application and here were two little configuration tricks I've started using of late that I wanted to share. And of course I was reminded that I should probably get them up on my web site."
Pierre Igot writes: "This is a tip that I was completely unaware of, in spite of my years of experience with Mac OS X. So I figure there might be other Mac OS X users who might not be aware of it and might find it useful. In a Finder window in column view, the file/folder names are often truncated because the columns are not wide enough to display them in full." Here's a way to deal with this.
This tip covers how to get Command and Option in the right place on an external PC keyboard, without stuffing them up on the built-in keyboard of a PowerBook. This is of great use to people who dock their laptop with a Windows keyboard, but don't like the "wrong" keyboard layout it produces and tire of constantly changing it back and forth in the system prefs. It would work with iBooks too.
Mohit Muthanna writes: "One significant productivity-enhancing feature that arrived with Tiger was Spotlight that has many advantages over traditional file-searching tools. It is a complete indexing and search framework that is tightly integrated into the OS. In addition to filenames and paths, it also indexes by file metadata and content and returns query results based on what's inside the file. Spotlight benefits can also be enjoyed on the command line, and this article explains how you can take full advantage of it from inside the OS X Terminal window."
While you're working in your Mac OS X environment, often you need to make an operation that requires a password (access e-mail, a password protected website, etc.) or you need administrator access to perform a certain task. As you use more services and access more systems, over time this entails the input of a multitude of passwords during your daily work.
Every item on your computer belongs to, or is owned by, an account. In addition to being owned by a particular user account, every item on your computer carries with it a set of permissions that control which user accounts can access it and what kind of access they have. Permissions control who can do what to which files, folders, and disks. In this excerpt from Take Control of Permissions in Mac OS X, Brian Tanaka details ways to ensure your permissions are in order.
Do you have access to a shell account on a unix server with some spare space? If so it's pretty easy to incrementally backup your files securely with SSH. While we're on the subject of backup, you might be interested in taking a look at an older article here on Non Stop Mac that discusses 
Yes, Apple Remote Desktop offers more than just observation and management tools. Ryan Faas gives the skinny on how non-IT Mac users and professionals can use Remote Desktop's least-known features for teaching, presentations, and collaboration. These are, without a doubt, its most overlooked uses, yet they may be the most innovative (and they are certainly the ones that can have broad application for users in any number of professions).
JC writes: "I have talked up my Mac mini running OS X Server quite a bit in regards to how I use it as the center of my home entertainment center, but I never really touched on why I use OS X Server. The mini is a great little beast, and I use it heavily. Aside from running Front Row on it via a neat little hack, it also acts as my sandbox webserver, my torrent box, and my backup server."
Apple released security update 2006-001 that patches twenty security holes in Mac OS X and bundled applications. This update can be downloaded and installed via Software Update preferences, or from Apple Downloads and is naturally recommended for all users.
With many people looking at their bottom lines this year looking to trim the fat from their budgets, it should come as no surprise that many eyes are on .Mac, a nominally good service without significant applications for many Mac users. The problem is that it's more expensive than many of its counterparts in the webhosting space, and that's something that's been discussed here in the past. What about using the WebDAV capabilities in Tiger Server, to broadcast your calendar?
You probably know that Apple Remote Desktop lets you observe and control Macs across your network, but did you know that it can also count, inventory, and keep track of them for you? In this first of three articles covering the often untapped possibilities of Remote Desktop, Ryan Faas 
Smart folders disguise Tiger’s convenient and dynamic Spotlight searches as good old-fashioned folders. You can use a smart folder to keep track of almost anything. Even better, smart folders give you access to hidden metadata and advanced Spotlight features. This article shows you how smart folders can reduce your need to organize.
Bare Bones Software, the company behind BBEdit and TextWrangler, announced the release of their new software - Yojimbo information organizer. The product empowers Mac users to manage, effortlessly and securely, the onslaught of information encountered every day at work and at home, even across multiple computers. 
This article covers the conceptual and practical aspects of how Mac OS X workstations and servers use Apple’s Open Directory architecture to store and make use of user account information. It also includes information about computers and other resources within a network.
Eric Bangeman writes: "Externally, the 
As expected, Apple today announced iWork '06. The new iWork includes major enhancements within Pages 2 and Keynote 3 including stunning three-dimensional charts, iPhoto-like advanced image editing and masking tools, and spreadsheet-like tables that make it easy to get great results in minutes.
Maria Langer learned the value of backups the hard way. Follow her example (the good example, not the bad one) and use .Mac Backup to protect the essential information you're probably not backing up right now.
Since Gmail is all the rage, here’s another way of getting your contact information out of Address Book and into Gmail’s web interface or into Thunderbird.
It's that time of year again, time to dust off the crystal ball and prognosticate about what Apple has in store for us. Macworld Expo opens in San Francisco soon and predicting Expo announcements has become nothing short of a sport. So before you lay your money down for that shiny new computer, here are Jason the Greek's Vegas odds on Steve Jobs announcements.
Don't have a shiny new iMac G5? But you want to make a Mac the center of your home entertainment system? Don't despair. Instead of shelling out thousands for a system, use this guide to connect an existing Mac to your home stereo and television. Emory Christensen shows you why it's not as hard as you think.
Profiles represent the color capabilities of your color-imaging devices. They are used by color management systems and applications to ensure predictable and accurate color reproduction. Therefore, the quality and accuracy of your profiles are crucial. In this lesson, you'll explore the differences between generic and custom device profiles and look at the options for acquiring both types.
This article shows you how to set up Mac X 10.4 Server to function as a VPN server. It also looks at the client configurations needed to connect to that server from Mac OS X 10.4 client (the non-server version of the OS) as well as from Windows XP.
Giles Turnbull writes: "When you read the articles and weblog posts by prominent Mac users and Mac pundits, do you ever find yourself wondering what kind of computer setup they're using? I do. So I recently contacted a bunch of Mac professionals - journalists and developers - to ask them straight out: what Mac do you use? And what do you like about it? Here's what happened."
Open Source Mac is a list of free and open source software for Mac OS X. In their own words: "We aren't trying to be a comprehensive listing of every open-source mac app, instead we want to showcase the best, most important, and easiest to use. This page should be a handy reference and a useful tool for getting more people to start using free and open-source software." We all love free software so check it out and enjoy.
Tucked inside Tiger’s Applications folder is a slew of free apps. Mail and Safari get all the attention, but an often overlooked application - the humble Address Book - can also save you time every day. Here are Scott Kelby’s tips for making the most of Address Book.
This article offers a look at additional ways to tighten security on workstations, from disabling peer-to-peer sharing to limiting SSH access and securing local NetInfo data.
Author: Chuck Toporek 
This all-new edition of Deep Freeze Mac allows for a completely non-restrictive working environment where there is no need to be concerned about system misconfiguration, corruption, or malicious damage to a Mac OS X system; a simple restart eradicates all changes down to the last byte and ensures that the standard system configuration is available at all times.
Dan Frakes writes: "Mac OS X has been firmly established as “the†Mac OS for a few years now. Still, even today, one of the most frequent requests Mac writers hear is, “How can I get back the Mac OS 9 Application Menu?†The questioner is referring, of course, to the menu that resided on the right-hand side of the menu bar in Mac OS 9, displaying the name and icon of the frontmost (“activeâ€) application and allowing you, via its menu, to switch to any other running application." Well, here you can find the answer.
What if you could combine Cocoa (that easy-to-use extension to C that is the primary language used for development on the OS X platform) and Java (one of the most widely used languages on the Internet) to create an OS X native application that utilizes the power of Java's libraries? Marcus Zarra does just that in this latest article in his series on Cocoa from the Java developer's perspective.
Life used to be simple: Your company was a Mac shop or a Windows shop. These days, the line between the two platforms is blurring, with many organizations using servers and workstations of both platforms for various functionalities. Ryan Faas explains some simple ways for system administrators to reduce the headaches of a multiplatform business.
Dan Benjamin writes: "What follows are updated instructions for manually building and installing Ruby, Ruby on Rails, MySQL, and LightTPD on Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). Compiling and installing these tools this way is well worth the effort, as the end result delivers an easy-to-upgrade, system-independent, stand-alone development platform that is impervious to potential problems that can be caused by system updates, operating system upgrades, etc."
This article will show you how to easily setup a free DNS service that will give your Mac computer a static hostname. There are a lot of possibilities you can use this for, as most of the Internet connections offer dynamic IP addresses. Having a dedicated hostname can make it easier to remotely connect to your computer and run any kind of server.
In this aticle, he author notes various things he's not satisfied with in Safari. Although I agree with most of them, this is one that I would like to have changed first: "There are several problems with Safari's tabbed browsing. The first is that it isn't on by default. It really should be, particularly because even with it on, it doesn't break anything."
As Apple transitions the Mac platform to include the Intel architecture, software developers who have been using the CodeWarrior IDE are moving their applications to the Xcode IDE. The reason is simple: by moving existing CodeWarrior applications to Apple's Xcode, they can create universal binaries—applications that include executable code that runs on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macintosh computers. Developers using Xcode are able to compile their applications to work on Intel-based as well as PowerPC-based Macs.
Mac OS X Tiger in a Nutshell provides the perfect overview of Tiger, covers all the essentials and most-talked-about new features of Tiger, including big-ticket items such as Spotlight for effortless searching, iChat AV for video conferencing, and Dashboard for one-click access to a calculator, weather reports, stock prices, flight times, and more. It also covers the hundreds of nips and tucks Tiger made to its underlying technologies and existing applications, including improvements to graphics and the Unix-based core and an easy way to automate time-consuming, repetitive manual or batch tasks.
Many have opted for a GMail account because of its storage size and ease of use. Now let's assume you would like to really take advantage of the 2.6+ GB storage space and import all of your existing e-mail into your GMail account. GMail Loader and this tutorial will help.
In this article I will try to share my experience with the best piece of hardware I ever used - a 12.1-inch iBook G4. I focused the article on giving my comments on different aspects of the iBook - software, hardware and the overall appearance. The article is accompanied by screenshots, photos and a small video.
One of the best open source and free pen testing applications available on the Internet today is the Metasploit Project. Metasploit is a very good tool to use to check and see if any services on your network are vulnerable for any one of the numerous publicly available exploits available in the Metasploit Framework. Read more about the usage of the Metasploit Framework at the Macintosh Security blog.
A Better Finder Rename is the most comprehensive file renaming solution for the Macintosh and transforms the tedious and time-consuming task of renaming multiple files into a simple matter of seconds. A Better Finder Rename 7 is the result of a complete 10-month rewrite of the 70,000+ lines of code that made up the version 6.9.5 release.
Authors: Michael Bartosha and Ryan Faas
