If you have multiple monitors and are using OS X Yosemite or later, you will have Apple’s latest multi-screen implementations available for use, where unlike classic extended desktop setups, each screen can be treated as a separate space, or “virtual desktop”, upon which you are doing work and organizing your windows. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: January 2016
How to get file information from the command line in OS X
When you are browsing your files in the OS X Finder, you will have a number of options for telling you what the file is. For starters, most files have an icon that represents the program that will open it, and then you can click the file and press Command-i to get information on it. When managing file in the OS X Terminal, if you are relatively new to the Terminal you may think the only identification for a file is its name (ie, a “.txt” suffix for a text file); however, there are several tools you can use to see quite a bit of information about a file. Continue reading
Tips and tricks for increasing the use of the OS X Console
One of the top troubleshooting tools you will use in OS X is the Console app, with which you can view a centralized list of logged system activity, be it from the system console or from application-specific log files. With the details output in the resources available in the Console, you can often track relevant activity for when crashes and other faults occur, and then address them accordingly. Continue reading
How to run “headless” virtual machines in OS X
If you run multiple operating systems on your Mac in virtual machines, then you likely use either Virtual Box, VMWare Fusion, or Parallels Desktop. For the most part, when you set up a VM on your Mac with any of these solutions, it will run as a window that shows you the graphical view of the virtualized OS. However, if you use your VMs for servers instead of running desktop applications, then you can use a small trick to run them in the background, and thereby save both a little processing power and some desktop clutter. Continue reading