Tips

In past versions of Safari, you had to navigate to a new tab to view its contents; however, with Safari 6 in Mountain Lion, Apple has added a new feature that allows you to preview all of the open tabs in a window.

When you create tabs in the browser either by clicking the plus button to the right of the toolbar or by pressing Command-T, you will now see a button appear next to the plus that looks like a small rectangle with margins. Clicking this (or selecting "Show All Tabs" in the View menu) will shrink … Read more

A new feature that Apple has included in Mountain Lion offers a convenient way to encrypt secondary volumes on your Mac, making data security far more convenient.

Recently discovered by Mac OS X Hints contributor "kirkmc," if you right-click a nonboot volume in the Finder, the contextual menu that appears now contains an option to encrypt the disk. Selecting this will bring up a window requesting that you supply a password and a password hint for the drive, and upon doing this, the system will wait a short while (the length of which depends on the amount of … Read more

Apple's introduction of Auto Save and Versions in OS X Lion was one of the more controversial modifications made to the operating system, partially because as part of the changes Apple removed with the age-old Save As command and replaced it with an unfamiliar "Duplicate" option. While applications such as Office that include their own document-handling routines maintained the Save As option, those that rely on Apple's central document-handling libraries lost this function.

The inconsistency of the Save As and Duplicate features between programs confused and disappointed a number of OS X Lion users. Even though … Read more

Apple has released its OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion (see CNET's full review) and it's available for download from the Mac App Store on systems running OS X 10.6.6 or later. If you're interested in the new OS, then be sure to read our guide on preparing your Mac for installing the upgrade, which includes information on the OS requirements, backing up, and clearing up resolvable issues before performing the upgrade.

You also might be interested in creating a standalone install drive for Mountain Lion. As with OS X Lion, Apple will likely release … Read more

A new procedure has surfaced that may allow owners of the older and unsupported Mac Pro 1,1 and 2,1 machines to run Mountain Lion natively on their systems.

When Apple initially released OS X Mountain Lion developer previews to testers and its development community, word spread that the OS would leave out some of Apple's earlier Intel-based Macs, including the first Mac Pro systems that still pack a decent amount of computing power. Apple made these requirements official more recently on its OS X up-to-date Web page for Mountain Lion.

The reason for these limitations revolved around … Read more

Ouch.

Is there a worse feeling than seeing your iPod Touch smack the ground and hearing the unmistakable crack of glass?

Just one: picking up the iPod and realizing the screen is shattered top-to-bottom. That was one expensive attack of gravity.

This happened to my daughter not long ago, resulting in a fourth-gen iPod Touch that, remarkably, still worked, but really wasn't usable anymore owing to the spider web of cracked glass.

As the household cheapskate, I figured it would be cheaper to repair the unit than buy a new one. After all, a current 32GB iPod Touch sells … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed in by our readers.

This week readers wrote in with questions on how to back up to an internal partition or drive in a Mac, what to do about files not opening in the appropriate application when double-clicked in the Finder, and whether or not the Mountain Lion upgrade will affect Boot Camp partitions. We welcome views from readers, so if you have any suggestions or alternative approaches to these problems, post them in the comments!

Question: Backing up to an internal drive or partition MacFixIt reader Curtis asks:… Read more

Apple's next release of OS X "Mountain Lion" is slated for release by the end of this month, with some recent developments suggesting it may be out by as early as next week. If you are thinking about upgrading your Mac to the new operating system, then you might consider reserving some time this weekend to ensuring your system is capable of and prepared for the upgrade.

While for the most part you should be able to download and install the upgrade without any problems, there are a few things you can do to help prevent running … Read more

While the OS X Terminal is not a familiar operating environment for most Mac users, those who have had experience with Unix-based systems will find it to be an invaluable tool for managing their systems. One of the most common uses of the Terminal is to establish a remote log-in session on a system using the secure shell (SSH) command, and sometimes invoke multiple connections to the same system and different systems at the same time.

As a result of this, you might find you have many windows open at once to manage these connections in, though starting with Snow … Read more