Friday Favorite: Optimal Layout brings app switching and window controls to your fingertips
Optimal Layout is a great utility that fundamentally alters the way that I interact with my Mac. In short, it gives me the ability to use my keyboard to quickly change between windows. That might sound like what you're been doing with ⌘ + Tab, but ...
Safari users seeing random ’404 not found’ on valid support.apple.com pages
For the past few weeks, I have run into a problem with links to Apple.com coming up 404 "not found." Specifically, these have all been links to pages on http://support.apple.com/. For example, this morning I did a Google search for 10.7.3 combo. One ...
Unofficial "Look Up in 1Password" bookmarklet for iOS 5
1Password is one of my most-used iOS apps, since I need it to log in to any site which requires a password. Since the introduction of 1Password on iOS, Agile has provided a bookmarklet which will open 1Password and then search for the current domain. ...
How to backup your Mac App Store apps
The excellent ReadNow application, which allows you to easily read articles from your Instapaper and Read It Later articles on your Mac, has been pulled from the Mac App Store "...because of an infringement letter." Developer Michael Schneider added "...
Ask TUAW: How do I setup a Mac with both an SSD and a regular hard drive?
Reader Mark R. Friedman wrote in to ask about setting up a Mac Pro with an SSD in the second optical drive, keeping the /Users folder on another drive; he wasn't sure how to do it. Macworld just discussed one method, using the built-in home folder pa...
Ask Different contest starts today with bonus for TUAW readers
The other day I wrote about Ask Different, the Apple-centric site in the Stack Exchange crowdsourced tech-help network. At the end of that article I mentioned something was coming, and now I can tell you the rest of the details.
The Contest
Start...
Daily Mac App: Fluid
Fluid lets you create an "app" out of a website. If you use one specific website all the time, this alone is very handy. For example, if you wanted a browser specifically for Gmail, you could make one using Fluid and set its own icon, download direc...
Daily Mac App and Friday Favorite: CodeRunner
CodeRunner is a text editor for people who write code. It comes with built-in syntax highlighting for AppleScript, C, C++, Java, JavaScript (Node.js), Objective,C, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, or shell scripting.
I have been using it for a few months,...
Daily Mac App: FlashMount quickly mounts disk images
DMG files are often used when distributing Mac software outside the Mac App Store. While DMGs can be confusing to new users, I like them because they allow me to keep an original, unmodified version of whatever program I have downloaded. About the on...
AmazonBasics bluetooth keyboard is highly portable for low price
I am a big advocate of the iPad as a portable computer which can satisfy most of the needs of most computer users most of the time. Combine the iPad with a keyboard, and it becomes even easier to use. The only downside has been the cost. The Apple...
Daily Mac App: iExplorer
Like most technically-inclined folks, I found myself doing a little family tech support over the holidays. I needed to use an iPod touch as a USB drive to copy files between my Mac and my brother's Windows 7 computer. This isn't something I'll do oft...
Holiday Gift Guide: Choosing an iPad stand
My friend Maya wrote to ask: "Which iPad stand should I buy? I can't seem to find any really positive reviews. I want it mostly for cooking, but it would also be nice to have something to stick my iPad on while it's charging so it's not just layin...

