In praise of the Utilities folder's unsung heroes →

From staples like Disk Utility and Activity Monitor to once-in-a-while lifesavers like Grab and Migration Assistant, OS X’s Utilities folder is a goldmine.

I agree. Jason highlights many good ones here. My personal pick would be DigitalColor Meter. I find I use it several times a month.

In Defense of Good-Enough Gadgets →

Resist the urge to buy the latest, shiniest smartphone, writes Christopher Mims. Like cars, the functional difference between this year’s model and last year’s has never been smaller. One result is a growing marketplace for used electronics of every kind.

Interesting perspective. Well worth the read. It is behind the WSJ paywall though. Adding it to Instapaper grabbed the whole article for me though.

(Source: The Wall Street Journal)

Mine Is Better Than Yours - Sanspoint. - Essays on Technology and Culture by Richard J. Anderson →

There’s nothing wrong with liking the crazy, fancy stuff us geeks like. We can’t control our obsessions, but we can control how we communicate them to others. Smug superiority gets us nowhere.

Mike Dicken's iOS world travel setup - The Sweet Setup →

I loved this interview with Mike Dickens who is traveling the world with his main setup being the one you see above. But the part that stuck out to me was his answer to what he would do differently if he could:

I would bring a laptop. I spent a few months weighing the options, literally, between an iPad Mini and an 11″ MacBook Air. I ended up selecting the iPad for two reasons: size and photo editing. It may seem contradictory, but I’m more fluent editing pictures in Snapseed and VSCOcam on the iPad than in Aperture on a laptop with similar plugins. However, the decision was short-sighted. On a trip of this scale, there are more tasks — and more varied tasks — than an iPad is capable of supporting at this point.

The road to figuring out what is enough for ourselves is paved only by figuring out what works and what doesn’t. By occasionally erring on one side or another will we often find that balance.

Plugging a 1986 Mac Plus into the modern Web →

Reviving an old computer is like restoring a classic car: There’s a thrill from bringing the ancient into the modern world. So it was with my first “real” computer, my Mac Plus, when I decided to bring it forward three decades and introduce it to the modern Web.

I love projects like this. They prove that even the technology we consider “old” is still pretty useful if you want it to be.

AdwareMedic →

Removes all known adware from your Mac. It is very simple to use, and should clean up your system in less than a minute, from start to finish. Just open the app, click the Scan for Adware button, and remove anything that is detected.

I have been using this in client situations with increasing regularity. Works great. 

But, this also should point out the fact that such things that we Mac users used to not even worry about are becoming increasingly common. In the past, the Mac was largely protected by its relative obscurity. As an adware developer, why even bother the manpower targeting a machine with less that 5% worldwide marketshare? Well, Macs are no longer in that position. As Apple grows, so does the size of the target. Sad but true.

(For what it’s worth, a program called Genio is the adware I most commonly run into these days. But it is far from the only one.)

(via onethingwell)

OutlineEdit →

I’m a pretty big fan of outliners and have been for a very long time. I personally use and love OmniOutliner Pro but not everyone needs that kind of firepower. This looks like a nice simpler alternative.

Access Hidden Options and Information With Your Mac’s Option Key →

Getting to know your Mac better is what we believe in around here. This is a pretty good round-up of the hidden power that lays in wait behind your Option key.

(via The Loop