A short while ago we ran an article about essential software. In this second part of the series, we’ll look at the software that you may well be able to live without, but really shouldn’t. We’ll try to cover as many bases as possible in this series, but as you’ll be aware, there’s a huge variety of software, and we don’t really have a hope of covering everything out there. But we will try to cover the most enjoyable for now. Picture Perfect By far, [...]

In this day and age, our children have access to computers in a way that we didn’t. Although I don’t think it’s a bad thing for children to be on computers, there must be some control and / or restrictions in what they can or cannot do. Luckily for us, setting up Parental Controls on a Mac is very easy to set up. Once you have set up Parental Controls, you are at least safe in the knowledge that your children can use your Mac [...]

The first time I used a Mac, I was amazed at how beautiful the icons looked on the screen. Amazingly, this was almost 20 years ago, and the Mac was a monochrome version. I remember very fondly how when you dragged something into the Trash, it would actually appear like trash had filled up the trash can! But the action of dragging something from the furthest corner of your desktop, all the way to the bottom right of your Dock can be a drag (literally). [...]

It seems that as one threat comes and goes, another pops up and shows it’s head. There seems to be a new virus, in the form of a Trojan Horse that is ready to infect unsuspecting Macs all over the world. As you visit some sites, you may be asked to install Flash to view something on the webpage. Installing Flash from this website will leave your Mac infected. The solution for this particular threat is very easy. If you are asked to install Flash [...]

Last week, we took a look essential keyboard shortcuts. In this next part of the series, we’ll have look at some other aspects of using your keyboard to do things ordinarily reserved for the mouse or trackpad. Note, the idea is to keep your hands from jumping around your table from keyboard to mouse and back again. The more you can do with your fingers on the keyboard, the more efficient you’ll become. Selecting Text By pressing cmd + A you will be able to [...]

According to a post on AppleInsider, there is a new threat that all Mac users should be aware of. Normally, we Mac users have been in a position of luxury when it comes to viruses, especially compared to our Windows counterparts. This latest threat so far seems to be an “experimental” virus or malware. It comes in the form of a PDF file, which when opened will show writing in Chinese. it will also be installing some nasty stuff in the background that could potentially [...]

We’ve covered software updates before on Macstarter. Those of you who have recently moved over from the world of Windows to a Mac will no doubt have not-so-fond memories of update balloons in the bottom right of your screen popping up at any given moment to disturb you from your work. Well, as you’ll know Macs are not immune from updates, and every so often you’ll be told you need to update your software. So should you? Well, the answer is yes. Sort of. If [...]

At Macstarter, we whole heartedly believe in efficiency. And we have discussed many times how efficiency is the sum of a combination of things. You have to learn the best way of doing something. You then have to fit that into your normal way of doing things. Keyboard shortcuts for me are the foundation of efficient working. If you’re constantly taking your hands off the keyboard to reach for a mouse / trackpad, you might not be as efficient as you could be. A colleague [...]

Those of you who went to Lion should have noticed something when opening programs. In previous versions of OS X, opening programs like TextEdit simply opened up a blank page ready for you to type on. With Lion, as you open a program, you will find yourself suddenly staring at ALL the windows you had open of that program. So let’s say you had been looking a couple of PDF files, and innocently quit preview thinking that was the end of it. The next PDF [...]

This shortcut works on most iterations of OS X, but is especially for the all the Lions and Lionesses out there. For some reason, when opening a finder window, my copy of lion insists on opening them without the top toolbar or the sidebar. As the side bar is vital to me, I end up having to go to the left side of the window and dragging it out. Every time. So, in order to stop myself from going insane, I decided to at least [...]