As first pointed out by OS X Daily, Mountain Lion's built-in screen savers cycle through a couple dozen awesome photos, across several categories, with images of space, nature, and more. The images are huge—and thus make great desktop backgrounds.



To find the images, use the Go To Folder command in the Finder (from the Go menu) and navigate here:



/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.Framework/Versions/A/Resources/Default Collections/



There, you'll find four folders full of high-resolution imagery. You can copy them elsewhere, or even access the images from right where they are. Simply fire up the Desktop & Screen Saver preference pane, click the Plus (+) icon at the left, and add the folders—or individual images—as desired.

Do you want AirPort Utility to look how it used to? Howsabout something akin to the Logs interface you could use to see connected client’s? Well, mashing the option key has paid off again! As alerted to me on the Twitter via an @dmnelson re-tweet, https://twitter.com/jeff_lamarche/status/364905545272012800

If you hold down option and double-click a base station in Airport Utility, you get all the old functionality. Why did noone tell me this!?

— Jeff LaMarche (@jeff_lamarche) August 7, 2013

This doesn’t really get you more in the way of features, but when change is scary and goes jingly-jangly in our pockets, seeing a familiar modal dialog makes us feel at ease.

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This script opens a new Safari window if none is open, maximizes the front window if minimized, and opens a new focused tab on the left with your bookmarks, with the text caret in the address bar.

I Googled for such a script to no avail so I made it myself. Bound it to ⌘T and scope Safari in Quıcĸsıɩⅴεʀ (of course you're using Quıcĸsıɩⅴεʀ, what else?) or any other lesser hotkey application. You can still use New Tab menu item to open tabs on the right by changing the shortcut in the Keyboard Shortcuts section of System Preferences, say to ⇧⌘T.




If you open bookmarks:// you may notice a flicker when setting the focus on the first tab. It may be due to the applescript command used — if you find a better method put it in the comments.
Also, I used clicking "Open Location…" instead of setting the "AXFocused" attribute because the item hierarchy changes when in full screen mode.

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Few of us ever REALLY want Caps Lock turned on; when we do hit it, we do so accidentally. There are workarounds.

You can just disable the key entirely, of course. To do so, go to System Preferences, and choose Keyboard. Then click the Modifier Keys button at the lower right of the Keyboard tab. Finally, set Caps Lock to No Action (or, alternatively, have it pull side duty as a bonus Control, Option, or Command key).

That's a great solution for those of us who only ever trigger Caps Lock unintentionally. But what about folks who genuinely want the option to quickly enter a mode for NONSTOP CAPITALIZATION, yet still want to avoid entertaining said mode accidentally? For those troubled typists, the solution is a free utility called CapSee. It displays an unmissable on-screen indicator when you're in Caps Lock mode. ISN'T THAT GREAT?

If you haven’t yet been hit by iMessage spam, you’re lucky: It’s awful. And it’s even worse when you realize that the spammer can know with certainty that the unwanted message really was delivered to you. As first noted by MacStories, Apple recently posted a way to deal with unwanted iMessages in your inbox.

Here’s the skinny.

When an unwanted, spammy iMessage arrives, first take a screenshot. (If you got the iMessage on your iOS device, press the Home and Sleep/Wake buttons at the same time. If you see the spammy iMessage on your Mac, use Command-Shift-3.)

Apple also needs to see the full email address or phone number of the person you received the spammy message from. You can either screenshot that data too, or copy and paste it.

Once you have all those details assem...

Use the steps in this article in instances when you might need to delete a song or music video from iCloud.

Quite some time ago, I needed to create a script which would mount a network volume. I did not want to hardcode username and password into the script, so I kept looking for ways to accomplish this using OS X’s built-in Keychain. The following example uses a script to mount a network volume, using variables for the currently logged-in user, and fetches its password from the Keychain. Of course, you can do other things with this approach, so I figured it might be of use to someone out there.

The following is a combination of these 2 links:

http://hintsforums.macworld.com/showthread.php?t=163359

http://blog.macromates.com/2006/keychain-access-from-shell/

This script gets the password for the currently logged in user and pulls its password from the Keychain. It then mounts a share...

My friend Frank works for Canon in Manhattan, and occasionally gives demos in a room with locked-down iPads. Sometimes those iPads need to be rebooted—but Frank has no access to the sleep/wake switch ostensibly required to power off an iPad.

In the past, I’ve suggested that Frank “reset” something (under Settings -> General -> Reset) that’s easy to set again; resetting Location & Privacy settings doesn’t mess too much up, and it restarts the iPad when you tap it.

But there’s a better way. Also in the Settings app, head to General -> Accessibility, and and turn on Assistive Touch. That adds a draggable dot control to your screen, meant for people with physical challenges that prevent them from triggering certain iOS actions the traditional way. Tap the dot, then tap Device, and finally tap and hold Lock Screen—a software equivalent of the sleep/wake button. After a few moments, the familiar Slide to Power Off message appears, and you can shut the iPad...

If Motion 5 isn't performing as expected, try these basic troubleshooting steps to attempt to isolate and resolve the issue. Note that these steps are not intended to address a specific issue and are not comprehensive.

Drives are sometimes sold pre-formatted in a format other than Mac OS Extended (such as FAT32). These drives may not perform as expected with Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5, and Compressor 4. Drives installed in your computer or connected externally via FireWire should be formatted using the "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" disk format for the best performance with Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5 and Compressor 4.

Registering Apple products is not required for service and support.

Learn about taking pictures of your screen (screen shots) in OS X.

Apple has now publicly announced some of the new enterprise and education targeted features of iOS 7, and while all of the newly announced features are exciting, the most important one is the addition of App Store license management.  This will solve many headaches that organizations have encountered when having to deploy applications to users, especially paid ones.

Today, with iOS 6, if an organization wants to deploy a paid application to its users, there are a few options, but all of them have serious drawbacks:

• Supervise devices, installing applications via Apple Configurator or an MDM solution.  This will get the applications on the devices, but users will be unable to update the applications as their Apple IDs do not own them.
• Buy applications through VPP, and distribute the codes to users.  Users can then register with their Apple IDs, and...

Apple Configurator was updated to version 1.3 on June 18, 2013. With the new update, some new features were added, some old features returned, and some things have changed.

Backups are encrypted again!!!
This means that keychain data (passwords, restriction pass codes, etc) are now stored in backups! This is huge!

Update when available, Update when device is in recovery
This means you can leave Configurator running and it will run any iOS updates only when they are available, or you can make it update only when devices are put into recovery mode.

Administrators can install apps on devices configured to not allow users to install apps
This means you can install an app on a device that has the App store disabled. Big time saver, as previously you had to turn the app store back on, install apps...

On June 23, 2013, AppleCare published selected service exams at Pearson VUE. This article describes how to access those exams.

AirPort base stations that appeared in previous versions of AirPort Utility might not appear in AirPort Utility 1.3 for iOS, or AirPort Utility 6.3 in OS X.

Some applications not developed by Apple may not recognize the built-in FaceTime HD Camera or may display a black screen on MacBook Air (Mid 2013) computers. This may also occur with Final Cut Pro X v10.0.8.