Mac Tricks » Tips & Tricks

Run Windows Applications on a Mac

sergio — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 03:32:44 +0000

Let me tell you something. If you ever paid money for a Windows Emulator for your Mac, make a sad face and read these words very carefully. Open source is free, stable, reliable, and continuously updated. So on the topic of running Windows executables on your Mac, Darwine has been around for years and is the Mac port of the popular Wine app which has been available to *nix users for years. Download it using this easy guide and start playing your favorite Windows game in minutes.

The great thing about open source software is the large community backing it, meaning any problem you run into you can almost assure yourself someone has dealt with it and likely found a solution. If you head on over to the Darwine Google Code Page, you will find the download section with the latest releases and a wiki that will provide support if needed.

To setup Darwine browse over to the Download section and download the latest or “Featured” build. Drag the red Darwine folder to your Applications folder and you’re set. Now browse over to the Darwine folder in your Applications directory, and run WineHelper. Once WineHelper is loaded, go to Application -> Open… Browse to the .exe or whatever Windows file you may want to run, and select it. Chances are your Windows App is now running.

Keep in mind Darwine requires that you have X11 installed, if you don’t just Google “X11 Mac Download”, it’s not hard to find.

Enjoy!

Add a Second Menu Bar for Dual Monitors

sergio — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 05:38:43 +0000

Call it a trick or not, anyone who has used dual monitors on a Mac knows how handy it would be to have a second menu bar on the extending screen. The following app does exactly that by placing the menu on your second screen and giving you a fairly wide variety of options and customizations that allow you to tweak it to your hearts content.

SecondBar is as easy to install as it is download. Just head over to their website grab yourself a copy and you’ll have more menu bars then you’ll know what to do with. Enjoy!

Manually switch video cards on Core i7 and i5 MacBook Pro’s

sergio — Fri, 14 May 2010 01:58:29 +0000

The new 2010 i7 and i5 MacBook Pro’s feature two graphics cards, an integrated Intel HD card and a GeForce GT 330M. There’s nothing wrong with this, unless you’re trying to conserve battery life and aren’t playing games. For whatever reason Apple hasn’t released any updates with the functionality to switch between the two manually, but thankfully some hackers have done the dirty work for us.

You can download gfxCardStatus here. Once installed you will find an icon in your menu bar with 2 options, ‘i’ for the Intel card and ‘n’ for the nVidia card. Have fun!

Easily mount NTFS in OS X

sergio — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 18:42:36 +0000

You would be surprised how many people experience issues related to this topic. Thankfully there are people out there that are willing to give up some of their time to help the rest of the world out, for free! The following program will easily enable you to mount for read/write an ntfs drive on your Mac.

Check out the NTFS Mounter website and just download the app from the downloads section. The app is beautifully Airport inspired and will fit in great with your current desktop look. Plus the convenience of its functionality makes it a great tool to keep on your jump drive so that you can share it with friends.

Enjoy!

Run your own Mac Jabber Server

sergio — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 23:01:45 +0000

For those of you trully nerdy enough to need something like this, i solute you. In fact i myself have recently needed to run a jabber (XMPP) server for one reason or another, so here is the simplest and most popular option available to Mac OS X users right now. Ignite Realtime’s Openfire is a simple yet powerful open source solution to this problem. Here’s how to do it.

Check out the Ignite Realtime Openfire webpage and download the server. Once you install the app you will have an additional control panel in the “System Preferences” pane for Openfire. There you will be able to administrate your Openfire server.

A common issue that people have while installing Openfire, is that once installed the administration panel wont let you login. The fix to this is simple, just restart the Openfire service, and then restart the system. Once you’re back in you should be able to login without any issues.

Good luck and let me know what you think of this service in the comments.

Edit Mac Hosts File

sergio — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 07:10:02 +0000

This may not be so useful for everyone, but i’m sure i’m not the only one who has searched for an answer to this question. Whether it may be for easy access to your favorite website or some kind of home development project editing your Macs hosts file is easy as ever. Ever done it on a Windows machine? It’s pretty much the same thing. Here is how we do it.

Go to Finder -> Go -> Go to Folder.. and type in “/etc” without the quotes obviously. Once you hit enter a normal Finder window will appear and you will see a hosts file. Edit it just as you would in Windows. IP of the address you would like to associate with the name following it. Save, and you’re set!

Transfer Music from iPod and iPhone to Mac

sergio — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 04:26:31 +0000

There was a time when this was one of the most complicated and ask about questions on the internet among Apple users. Luckily the times have changed and this daunting task is no more. Pod to Mac is a simple easy to use program which will allow you to get your tunes off of your iPod or iPhone. Install it, run it, move on. Follow the following instructions.

Head on over to the Pod to Mac website and download the app. Once installed you will be greeted with a very Finder like window with the music on the attached device. From there you can drag and drop the files of your choosing and enjoy musical freedom.

Change OS X Login Background

sergio — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 23:00:15 +0000

Here’s a simple little holiday tweak for all of you Mac users out there. Years of the Aurora wallpaper have led to artistic boredom in my opinion, so wouldn’t it be great if we could change that default wallpaper to something much more visually inspiring. Well now you can, and it probably wouldn’t take you much more then a minute. Here’s how we do it.

Follow these steps:

Click on your desktop to select Finder
Hit Command+Shift+G, this will open the ‘Go to Folder’ screen
Type ‘/System/Library/CoreServices/’
Once the folder opens, find ‘DefaultDesktop.jpg’ and replace it with a file of your choice (make sure to keep the name the same)
Restart your Mac

That is all! Next time you login prepare to be creatively inspired.

Master your Mac Battery

sergio — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 03:24:25 +0000

Having just bought a new battery for my MacBook, posting an article on calibrating it seems like the right thing to do. Not many people know that properly exercising and calibrating your battery will result in a much longer life span. The process is easy, so easy in fact that you will probably not even realize you’ve actually done anything at all.

First i recommend downloading Coconut Battery. This simple application will tell you about your battery’s current charge, maximum charge, and load cycles (the number of times you’ve charged and discharged your Mac). You can get this little gem for free here.

Once you run Coconut Battery, you should see a screen like the one bellow. Keep this in mind and run it every couple months to keep up to date on your battery’s health.

To calibrate your battery, just perform the steps bellow:

Plug in your laptop, and charge it until the light turns green, and the status indicator on the menu bar indicates your battery is fully charged.
Let your battery stay fully charged like this for two hours (you may use your computer in the meantime.
Now disconnect the power adapter and run your computer until the battery runs low. The computer should notify you of this when the battery is getting critically low.
Once you have been notified your battery is critically low, save all your work, and continue using the computer until it goes to sleep.
At this point you should either turn your computer off, or allow it to sleep for 4-5 hours.
Once you have finished waiting, plug the charger back in and leave it connected till the battery is completely charged.

This process is so easy, there’s no reason anyone couldn’t do it every 2-3 months. By doing so you’re exercising your battery, and telling the internal software about the state of your battery and how much charge it can actually hold.

If you have any questions or suggestion, leave a comment.

P2P on a Mac

sergio — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:44:42 +0000

Some people, mostly those new to the Mac OS, aren’t aware of the wide array of P2P software that is available. OS X i would say is just as good if not even better then Windows in a file sharing sense. With the relatively small amount of virus and exploit issues that Mac experiences, it is a much more safe environment to dabble in file sharing with. In this article, i would like to discuss a couple P2P options available for OS X, and some of my favorite clients for each. Of course, we only condone legal downloading of data, how you use this software is up to you.

BitTorrent

Most likely the largest and most widespread form of file sharing on the internet at the moment, BitTorrent allows users to find Torrents on specially designed Torrent Search engines and download software from users sharing that Torrent. Very simple to use, and our personal favorite. Here are our favorite BitTorrent Apps for Mac.

µTorrent

µTorrent is a tiny easy to use powerhouse of a BitTorrent client. Seriously, it is so light weight and fast that you will probably never want to use anything else. Get it here.

Tomato Torrent

A Torrent client that is built on the original BitTorrent client, Tomato Torrent is very small, and allows customization of nearly all of the available Torrenting options. Get it here.

Transmission

Transmission is an open source client written entirely from scratch. Its popular among the community and has a great support base, with clients available not only for Mac, but for *nix as well. Get it here.

Our favorite Torrent Trackers: isoHunt and TorrentBox

Gnutella

Available originally from Nullsoft, Gnutella has been around since early 2000 and is technically the largest file sharing network on the internet, with an estimated market share of over 40% (figure from 2007).

Acquisition

A much more noob friendly App for file sharing on Macs. Once connected to the Gnutella network you will have access to literally billions of files. This client has been around for a while, is constantly updated and is a true Mac App, being elegant, simple and fast. Get it here.

FrostWire

A simple, free and open source Gnutella client for Mac. Integrates with the OS very well, and provides all the features a user would want when browsing the Gnutella network. Did we mention its beautiful too? Get it here.

If you have any suggestions for this list, let me know in the comments.