I think one of the greatest Apple inventions of all time was iPhoto. Amongst all my friends and family, the one thing that has never failed to impress them is the ease with which you can get a set of photos off a camera, and put them onto your computer. iPhoto though, has hidden depths. Back in the day, when I used to develop my own photos in a dark room (remember those days?), I would create a contact sheet. In fact, if you develop [...]

I’ve often wondered about what makes Apple tick. A lot of my friends and family are Mac users, and most have either iPads or iPhones. The one thing we had been missing here in The Netherlands up until a few days ago was an official Apple retail store. That’s now opened up in Amsterdam, and by all reports it’s an amazing store. Today, as I was walking down a main shopping street in The Hague, I noticed that a local computer store had just reopened [...]

The one thing that I’m still smug about to this day, being a smug Mac owner, is the fact that out of the box, Macs come with a program that can handle PDF’s, pictures and a whole load of other formats – Preview. There’s no need to go and download a program from Adobe to do this. What most people miss though is that Preview is quite a robust program, and rather than just being a ‘viewer’ program, it can handle a number of tasks. [...]

I signed up to MobileMe a few years ago. I must confess, I didn’t really use the email address that came with it, but I really did rely on the syncing between my Mac and my iPhone. Once my wife got an iPhone, and I got a second MacBook from work, this syncing became vital. Sharing a calendar and an Address book is just fantastic – and makes me think that this is one way computers can actually make our lives easier. I came across a [...]

In this day and age, where file sizes have started to get bigger and bigger, it’s good to keep an eye on how big our folders are getting. If you’re dealing with Movies, Music, Photos, and other big files, it won’t be long before you start to run out of space on your computer. Here’s a quick way to get to the bottom of space problems on your computer. Get your home folder open, by either clicking on your Finder icon in the Dock and [...]

  If you’ve got Lion installed, you might want to update it (using System Update) to the latest 10.7.3. As well as all the normal updates to your system and background files, you’ll also now be able to go Apple.com and grab a copy of Messages Beta. As long as you’ve got an Apple ID, you can use Messages to send SMS messages from your Mac to any other Mac (with Messages installed) or iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. Although this doesn’t seem like a [...]

Ever since Apple announced iTunes Music Match, I’ve been dying to try it out. I love my music, and have over the years managed to accumulate thousands of songs. I have songs from a huge range of sources. I’ve ripped close to a thousand of my own CD’s. I have lots of songs bought off iTunes. I’ve got songs bought off various other vendor sites. I’ve even got some songs I converted from vinyl and tape from the 70′s and 80′s. So, if Apple are [...]

  For today’s article, I just wanted show a very quick demo of Alfred. As you can see, once you get used to Alfred, you can not only search your own Mac for things, but use Alfred to streamline actions that would ordinarily take a lot longer to do.

Following on from last week, one of our good readers pointed a few more shortcuts. Although we’ve covered these before on Macstarter, I’ll forgive myself for repeating these again. So, here goes. The cmd + TAB shortcut is something I can’t live without. In all honesty, the last time I switched from one program to another using a mouse would be years ago. So, pressing cmd + TAB is a great way to bring up all your open programs. But something I don’t normally do (which [...]

By all accounts, at the start of March, Apple are going to start the world wide frenzy that is called “a new iPad”. Yes, the iPad 3 should be introduced to the public. Will you be buying one? My iPad 1 was sold, just before the iPad 2 came out. I bought an iPad 2, and believe me folks, I have not been as impressed by a device as I was by this iPad. I’ve filmed on it, edited those movies. I’ve composed music on [...]