Tips

iPads don't come with their own protection. In fact, these sleek metal and glass beauties ship naked. That just won't do: you need a case. But when it comes to the iPad Mini, I quickly discovered, what makes a good case or bag is a very different proposition than for the larger iPad.

To help you pick out something good, here's what I've observed so far over the last couple of months of hard-core iPad Mini use. Let's take a look, shall we?… Read more

Besides installing an SSD to replace a mechanical hard drive, RAM upgrades are one of the more significant and beneficial upgrades you can do for a PC system. When it comes to Apple's systems, however, RAM upgrades from Apple itself have been insanely expensive, so my recommendation has always been, unless the RAM is soldered to the motherboard (as it is with the MacBook Air and Retina MacBook Pro), to purchase only the base amount of RAM and then upgrade it yourself later on.

Such was the case with my most recent Mac, a 17-inch 2011 MacBook Pro that … Read more

As with most e-mail clients, Apple's Mail program supports multiple accounts so you can access all of your e-mail from one program, and as such it is not uncommon for people to have different accounts configured for work, home, and other activities that they would like to keep separate. While convenient in some respects, there are times when composing messages using multiple accounts can have you redundantly selecting the account to send from.

By default Mail should use the current selected account as the "From" account when replying to a message, so managing replies or forwarding messages … Read more

Google finally got around to releasing a YouTube app for the iPad, and after using it for a few days, I applaud the search giant's efforts. The app feels quick and responsive, and all of the basic features -- accessing your account, commenting on videos, subscribing to channels, AirPlay support -- are present. (The ability to play audio of a video in the background after closing the app, however, is not.) The app also lets you create playlists, but this feature is somewhat buried. In this post, I'll show you where to go to create a playlist and … Read more

In the past, classic search routines in the Mac OS scoured the directory tree of the file system to locate files, but with ever-increasing numbers of files on computers, these searches became slower and slower. To tackle this in OS X, Apple introduced an indexing solution called Spotlight as a replacement for the classic search, which actively indexes files as they are created or edited. When you perform a search, the system accesses this index to almost instantaneously bring up search results not only for file names, but also for relevancy since the indexing includes the content of the files … Read more

While there are a number of media players and audio programs that can be used to play music through your Mac, iTunes being a library and content manager as well as a player that comes preinstalled on Mac systems makes it the most popular option out there. The program offers simple controls for sorting through music, generating playlists, and playing your music, but in addition there are some settings that can be used to greatly improve sound quality during playback.

The first of these is the Sound Enhancer setting in the iTunes preferences, which is activated by going to the … Read more

Time Machine is Apple's built-in backup solution for OS X that creates hourly backups of all files on the system. Unlike a clone of the drive, the backups are not directly bootable, but they can be used to restore any instance of your OS installation and file structure to the drive. This makes it convenient for restoring data to a recently repaired system, migrating to a new one, or undoing a recent configuration change that is causing problems.

This backup solution is quite useful to have and is easy to set up, but there may be instances where Time … Read more

With the release of iTunes 11, Apple has made some significant adjustments to the media player. While Apple has removed some items including Cover Flow and iTunes DJ, it has offered a number of other features such as a new "Up Next" playlist feature and a radically altered MiniPlayer window. Even though there are some major changes to the program, the essence of iTunes is still there; however, there are a few hiccups you might run into when using it that require small behavior adjustments on your part to get by. This might be as simple as clicking … Read more

Apple's computers are not the cheapest in the world, but are highly desired and as a result many people purchase their Macs secondhand through auction sites like eBay and Craigslist. Unfortunately in most cases these systems are old enough that their warranties have expired, so if something goes wrong after your purchase you might need to spend more cash to have it fixed.

Under the circumstances, it is best to give any used Mac a thorough check before you decide to purchase it. (Obviously, it would be hard to do this for most online purchases.) I've covered this … Read more