MacTricksAndTips.com

Terminal, I think, is one of the best apps for the Mac, most people would probably disagree. You can access a lot of system files and folders as well as complete high level task which don’t need a user interface. Gaining an advance knowledge of Terminal takes a long time. I have learnt how to use Terminal over the last three years and I still regard myself as a learner. This post will introduce you to a couple of basic commands and how to change default settings on apps (which I feature quite a lot).

Keychain is a rather powerful piece of technology on your Mac, it is designed to encrypt all of your passwords and keep them safe and secure. You don’t regularly useKeychain on a day to day basis, it is usually accessed by various applications. This post, however, is designed to explain to your a couple of features you should understand, and the ability to keep Keychain in tip top shape. Keychains are like wrappers for individual passwords, you can have many keychains (and even delete them). For the purposes of simplicity I will be sticking with the default keychain.

We all need to make sure our system is running correctly. The best way to access information on how your system is performing is through Activity Monitor. It is designed to show you information about your system resources. This includes, CPU, RAM, Disk, and Network, as well as individual system processes. Its not an app you use actively how every it is useful to have it running in the background. You mostly use Activity Monitor to troubleshoot problem applications and wonder why your Mac is running so slowly.

Today we are moving on to more minor applications in the Utilities folder. I actually use the Utilities Folder quite frequently. Due to the number of applications available there is going to be a couple of posts on the topic. Today I am going to feature Grapher, Grab and ColorMeter. In the next couple of days I am going to talk about Terminal, Keychain and Activity Monitor. utilites menu

We are moving on with some Pro tips for applications on your Mac and to make you into a real pro. Today we are going to feature Safari. The popular web browsing application. Although I don’t use Safari that frequently (I prefer Firefox) it does have some good features. Today I am going to explain to you some features that can take your usage of Safari to the next level. I am going to discuss some Private Browsing feature and what it does, some ways to control Safari background files and doing some cool things that you may not have noticed.

Today we are moving onto iTunes. The music player for Mac and Windows. Similar to the Mail post yesterday I am not going to do a major overview of iTunes, I am going to point out a couple of major points to make your life a little easier. I will focus on storing and making sure your iTunes library is in the best possible shape and using Smart playlists so you can quickly and easily access your music.

Would you believe it we are three weeks into the Noob2Pro series. Since I don’t have a post every day due to time constraints we still have two more weeks to do. Good for you. Similar to the previous post this post is going to discuss what has happened within the series, so you can catch up if you have missed any of the posts, plus a little teaser for what is going to happen in the next week. If you have any comments on the series please let me know.

We are about half way through the Noob2Pro series. Today we are going to focus on Mail. One of the best email applications for the Mac. Using Mail is easy as other Mac programs, but you need to set it up correctly. I am not going to go through every little tip about Mail in this post, but I will show you the best tips needed to use Mail effectively. To get a grips on how to use the Mail client, simply play around with it.