Mac Tricks » Utilities

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!

SQLyog alternative for Mac

sergio — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 08:30:17 +0000

This is an easy pick, not a shameless plug. All you developers out there know how convenient it is to have a real time database app. Sometimes phpMyAdmin just doesn’t cut it. For those who are familiar with the popular Windows counterpart, SQLyog, this will be a no brainer. Sequel Pro is a free and beautiful app for your Mac which will make web development and database administration a breeze.

How do i get this? Easy! Download the app for free on the Sequel Pro website. Enjoy. Let me know of any other good alternatives in the comments.

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.

Synchronize your Data

sergio — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 06:45:21 +0000

How nice would it be to have your documents synchronized on all of your machines? Having the ability to work on a document on your home pc, then being able to pull up the same document on your work pc without having to transfer it. Dropbox allows us to do just that. It keeps all your documents synchronized and you can get a 2gb account for free. Here’s how.

Go to the Dropbox website, and download the client. Fortunately it is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux, meaning you can share your files regardless of what platform you’re confined to. After you install the client just enter your username and password and you’re set. Do this on all your machines!

You can also set up shares with friends. Think of how easy it would be to share pictures, movies and music!

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.

Uninstall Apps Completely in OS X

sergio — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:13:08 +0000

One of the greatest usability features in OS X is the way applications are handled. I remember when i first switched to Mac i didn’t understand how to install a downloaded application. After looking it up online, and seeing that all you had to do was drag it to the Applications folder, i was pleasantly surprised. As great as this functionality might be, often you are paying a hidden tax. Sometimes, just dragging an App to the trash will not remove the hidden support files created. That is where AppCleaner comes in to play.

AppCleaner is a free Mac download provided by freemacsoft.net. Downloading it is as simple as going to their website and clicking download. Once you have installed AppCleaner, run the app and check out its features. AppCleaner provides a small window with a box that says “Drop Apps Here”. If you drag an App into that window, it will properly delete it and any other files that are part of that installation. You can also manage your Widgets and various other Plugins. But the best feature has to be SmartDelete. Once enabled (check the preferences), users can drag apps to trash as usual, and AppCleaner will automatically detect that you are uninstalling an App and prompt you with extra deleting options.

So lets review, AppCleaner is:

AppCleaner is extremely easy to use with its drag and drop interface
Prevent your favorite apps from being deleted accidentally
It will offer to delete an app properly when you move it to trash
All the files deleted are stored in a history

Get Notified with Growl

sergio — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:36:53 +0000

There are so many useful things this application does its hard to write this teaser. Growl is the ultimate Mac notification utility. It doesn’t consume any of your resources, it notifies you unintrusively, it looks good, and its free. Having personally used Growl for over 3 years, heres what i can say about it. It’s great when you’re listening to music and every time the track changes you get a little popup saying what the new song is, but it doesn’t minimize your game. It notifies you about your new email. It interfaces with your FTP app to tell you you’re upload or download is done. The possibilities are limitless!

Growl is a really simple application with an api which allows developers to create their own Growl interface. What that means is there are a lot of apps that support growl, and if they don’t, there is nothing stopping a developer from implementing it. This is great in the sense that the app will never go out of style or become deprecated, unless something better comes along.

To get growl head over to the growl website and check out the downloads section. The download comes with many extras, so i recommend reading the Read Me file so you know what to install and what not to install (such as the Itunes integration that is in the extras folder).

To get a good idea of how growl works, check out this youtube video (i didn’t make it, but it gets the point across).

Visualize your Hard Drive Usage

sergio — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:41:45 +0000

I often find it hard to understand how i could be occupying all my hard disk space when all i have is documents and MP3′s. It seems like it would be fairly convenient if Mac provided a way for users to visually represent their hard disk usage. Thankfully where Apple doesn’t fulfill the great Mac community does. Disk Inventory X is a handy little app which will take any drive or storage location on your Mac and create a visual graph along with a file list organized by filetype and location. You’ll be surprised what you find!

The first step to making this work is to download the app. Head over to the Disk Inventory X website, and download the application from the downloads section. I recommend dragging this one to your Utilities folder in the Applications directory, since its really more of a utility then an application.

Run the app and a small box will prompt you with a list of drives, select the volume you wish to visualize and hit ‘Open Volume’ to begin. After a decent wait, you will be prompted with the data. That’s it! From there you have the option of removing files, moving them around, whatever you want. Make sure to click on the actual graph to see what the big blocks are, its kind of fun.

Here are some screenshots:

Optimize OS X with OnyX

sergio — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:53:06 +0000

Don’t know what happened to all that free space you had? Computer chugging along barely getting by just trying to browse the internet? Or maybe your permissions are corrupt and you’re experiencing random errors and have just given up trying to fix them. We’ve all been there. Good thing that’s not a problem anymore, with OnyX on your Mac, you can optimize you’re entire system and go on with your day just as if nothing had happened. No terminal, no complicated instructions, just a few clicks.

OnyX is provided free by Titanium Software. Their easy to use GUI allows you to do the following and then some:

Verify the Startup Disk and the structure of its System files
Run miscellaneous tasks of system maintenance
Configure some hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock, Dashboard, Exposé, Safari, Login window and some of Apple’s own applications
Delete caches
Removes cumbersome files and folders
Much, much, much more…

Honestly i don’t even want to explain many of the things OnyX can do because i could not do this little app justice. Having personally used this app for over 2 years i can say that OnyX is a handy little utility to keep your Mac in tip top shape. To download OnyX, just head over to Titanium Software’s Download section.