Mac OS X

The latest update to Microsoft Office addresses a number of critical bugs with the program and offers new integration with Office 365, Microsoft's next-generation Office suite for both the Mac and Windows platforms. The update is available either through the Office 2011 AutoUpdate utility, or from the updater's Web page as a 113MB download that will bring the latest version of Office to 14.3.4.

If you have not yet installed any updates for Office 2011, this update requires that you have Service Pack 1 installed, so some people may see two consecutive updates for Office available … Read more

Running Windows on your Mac's hardware makes it possible to run virtually any program, regardless of what platform it was coded for. While virtualization is a closer-to-seamless approach to this, Apple's built-in Boot Camp feature offers a quick way to set up Windows in a secondary partition. When you run the Boot Camp Assistant, the system will create a partition to use, and then install Windows from your installation media. However, when doing so you may run into a problem in which the Windows installer claims, "We couldn't create a new partition or locate an existing … Read more

While the Mac platform has not been noted for catering to hard-core gamers, there are still many popular gaming titles and gaming accessories available for the Mac OS. If you own a Mac and have a few games you would like to try, then you might also be interested in getting a gaming controller or two up and running with your system. While the Mac's keyboard and mouse ought to be enough for most purposes, having a dedicated gaming controller can give you the feel of playing with a gaming console.

Of the game controllers available for home computers, … Read more

When connected to a Wi-Fi hot spot, especially if the hot spot uses multiple access points and there are multiple networks in the vicinity, you may encounter a problem where your Mac keeps losing its network connection and then attempts to establish a connection with a network for which you do not have access.

Additionally, even after you have selected a working connection, if you put the system in sleep mode, restart it, or if you just temporarily lose your connection for some reason, the system will again attempt to connect to that network. Having to continually select your Wi-Fi … Read more

The default size of the mouse pointers in OS X should allow them to be viewable in most situations, but there could be some instances in which the cursor can be difficult to locate. For example, if you need to dim your screen, it might be difficult to find the pointer; and sometimes, optional pointers -- such as those for text input or crosshairs -- can become lost among the textures of images on the screen.

This might be especially true when using projectors and large-format displays, where the relatively small cursor can be difficult to locate.

While you can … Read more

The standard F1 through F12 function keys in OS X by default are set to change a number of common system settings, including audio volume, backlight and brightness levels, and media player controls. Convenient as this is, sometimes their default behaviors can be intrusive or too crude for your needs.

For example, if your system is connected to an external amplifier that is set to a high volume, then the increments changed by the volume function keys may be too crude for your needs, and the corresponding audio indicator pop may be unpleasantly loud and intrusive, especially if you are … Read more

A virtual private network, or VPN, is a method of securely connecting to a network from a remote location, and is commonly used in work environments. While some institutions require the use of third-party VPN client software, others allow the use of Apple's built-in VPN clients.

In these cases, you can choose to enable the VPN menu in the OS X menu bar, and can then use it to quickly establish a VPN connection. However, if you are regularly connecting to your VPN, you may choose to also implement a hot-key shortcut to speed things up a bit more.… Read more

OS X comes with a number of fonts, and if you install third-party software such as Microsoft Office or Adobe's Creative Suite, your system may be inundated with them. This may not be that big of an issue, but if you want to see what a font looks like before picking one to use, having to slog through a large list to do so is impractical.

Fortunately, there are several options in OS X for previewing fonts that can help streamline the process, some of which may be more available or useful than others:

Font menus In most word … Read more

While using OS X, you may discover a folder at the root of the hard drive, called Damaged Files. You may wonder why it's there and what's in it.

This folder, which less commonly is found at the root of secondary storage volumes you have mounted, results from the system's automatic file system checking routines (fsck). These routines may run after a power failure, a kernel panic, or if you boot to Safe Mode by holding the Shift key at startup. In this routine, the system will check the inodes in the file system structure (folders and … Read more