This very brief tutorial will show you how to stream from the Spotify App on your iPhone or iPad to your AppleTV or Boxee Box/PC.

The ability to stream audio from Spotify on your iPhone or iPad to your AppleTV or Boxee device is actually built into the Spotify App – it’s just very buried. Here’s how to find it –

1. Launch Spotify and start playing a song. Tap the ‘box’ with the Artist/Song information located at the bottom of the Spotify App.



2. Now tap anywhere on the Album cover/art.



3. Here you’ll finally find the Apple “Send To” button (as illustrated in the screenshot below). Tap it…



4. … and select Apple TV …



5. … or the name of your Boxee device.



6. Now you can listen to Spotify on your home media center.

This very brief tutorial will show you how to ‘split’ the keyboard on your iPad so that you can type more comfortably using just your thumbs.

Follow the simple steps below to enable this lesser known feature (hat tip to Eric Hogg).

1. Open any App that uses the keyboard. Put your thumbs on the middle of the keyboard and ‘swipe’ outwards.


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2. Now your keyboard is split into two halves – making it much easier to type using only your thumbs – which also makes it easier to hold your iPad while typing.


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3. To revert to the normal/default keyboard, simply swipe the keyboards back together.


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This tutorial will guide you through the steps to create “keyboard shortcuts” – shortcuts that allow you to type just a few characters instead of an entire word or phrase – on your iPhone or iPad.

Your iPhone and/or iPad includes a feature that allows you to type a “shortcode” that will auto-complete to a full word or phrase. So instead of typing out something like your email address, you can create a shortcut that will automatically “type out” your email address for you.

1. Tap the Settings button on your iPhone/iPad, and select General from the list.



2. Scroll down and select Keyboard.



3. Scroll down to the Shortcuts section. Lets jump right in and create one – tap the Add New Shortcut… button.



4. In the Phrase section, type out the phrase that you want your shortcut to turn into. In this example, we’re going to create a shortcut for your email address. So, in the Phrase section, enter your email address.



5. In the Shortcut section, enter the short ‘code’ you want to use that will automatically enter your email address when typed. In this example I used the ‘code’ rgm (which in my mind stands for “Ross GMail”). It also works as a good code because “rgm” isn’t a word, or the start of one. Tap the Save button (upper-right corner) when you’re done.



6. Your new shortcut should be listed in the Shortcuts section.



7. Now try it out. Open up a new Text Message or Email or any App that you type in, and enter the phrase you set as your shortcut. As you can see in the image below, as soon as I entered my shortcut (#1) it auto-completed to my email address (#2).



8. That’s it! You can create as many shortcuts as you’d like, and the more you use them the more helpful you’ll find them.

If you’re a little bit embarrassed that you couldn’t figure out how to do this – don’t be. It’s not as intuitive as most things on the iPhone/iPad. Here goes:

1. Launch the Camera App on your iPhone/iPad. While you’re holding the iPhone/iPad with one hand, place two fingers from your other hand on the screen, and ‘slide’ them outwards (as illustrated in the screenshot below). Note: works best/is most comfortable when using your thumb and index finger.



2. As you move your fingers outwards, the screen (and camera) will start to zoom. At this point, the “zoom slider” will also appear on the screen. You can use it to fine tune/adjust your zooming.



3. Yeah, that easy…

Decided that picture probably shouldn’t have gone up on Instagram? Here are the quick steps to delete it –

1. At this time, you can’t delete a photo you’ve shared on Instagram via the web (ie. http://instagram.com). You need to use the App itself. So launch Instagram from your Smartphone and go to your “home” screen. Locate the photo you want to delete and tap it.



2. Tap the “more” button (the one with 3 dots on it, as illustrated in the screenshot below).



3. Select Delete.



4. If prompted to confirm the deletion, tap Delete



5. That’s it – gone! Now keep in mind – for the time this photo was “up” – anyone could have downloaded it (if it was set to public). If it was set to private, any of your “Instagram” friends could have viewed and/or downloaded it. Now, it’s gone.

Recently Facebook decided that in addition to visual notifications, it would start making a “beeping sound” when you receive a new notification. This brief tutorial will show you how to disable that annoying beep.

Note: this “feature” hasn’t been rolled out across all of Facebook yet, so your account may not be affected (yet).

1. Click the ‘Settings’ button in the upper-right corner of your Facebook page and then select Account Settings from the menu.



2. Select Notifications from the left column.



3. Click the link titled view from the On Facebook row.



4. Remove the check-mark from the Play a sound when each new notification is received box and then click the Save Changes button.



5. That’s it, no more beeping from Facebook!

This tutorial will explain how to get your iPhone (or iPad) to “forget” a network that it has previously connected to, so that it stops connecting to it automatically in the future.

1. Tap the Settings button on your iPhone/iPad.



2. Select the Wi-Fi setting.



3. Make sure your Wi-Fi is turned ON. Scroll down to the Network that you want to stop your iPhone/iPad from automatically connecting to, and tap the small ‘blue arrow’ next to it.



4. Tap the large Forget this Network button.



5. Tap the Forget button to confirm.



6. Going forward, your iPhone or iPad will not automatically connect to the network. You’ll need to manually reconnect to it if you wish to use it again.

This very brief tutorial will show you how to disable the ‘clicking’ noise you hear each time you tap a key on your iPhone or iPads touch-screen keypad without having to turn down the volume.

1. Tap the Settings button on your iPhone or iPad (or iPod Touch).



2. Scroll down to Sounds and tap it.



3. Scroll all the way down to Keyboard Clicks and toggle the ON/OFF switch to OFF.



4. That’s it! From now on you won’t hear that clicking “typewriter sound” each time you type on your iPhone/iPad.

This short tutorial will take you through the steps to enlarge the font size on your iPhone or iPad (and iPod Touch) to make the text easier to read.

Note: this will not increase the size of the ‘keyboard’ on your iPhone/iPad, nor will it enlarge the Home Screen icons. It will increase the size of the font that’s used by the following Apps: Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Messages (SMS/TXT/etc) and Notes.

1. Tap the Settings button.



2. Select General.



3. Scroll all the way down to Accessibility and tap it.



4. From the Vision section, select Large Text (notice the default is set to Off).



5. From here you can select a larger size font to use. Try the 20pt size first, and if it’s still too small you can return to this screen and try the next size up until you’ve found the right one for you.



6. Your Messages (TXT/SMS/other) will now appear in a much larger text size.



7. The same with your Calendars …



8. … Notes …



9. … and Contacts.



10. That’s all there is to it!

Here’s a list I’ve compiled of the best ways to speed up and improve the performance of your Mac. Advanced Mac users will likely know most of these tips, but you learn something new every day, right? :)

1. Keep OS X Up To Date

It may seem like an obvious tip, but I’ve worked on too many Macs with “42 Software Updates Available”, and it’s arguably the best way to ensure your Mac is running as smoothly as possible. By default, OS X will check for updates automatically. Install them when they’re available. You can also manually check for updates by selecting the “Apple Button” from your Menu Bar, and then Software Update… from the list.

If you’re using OS X 10.7 (Lion) or earlier, you’ll see a window similar to the one below. If there are updates to install – install them.

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If you’re using OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion), the method to deliver updates has changed – it’s now done through the App Store.

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2. Use OnyX

Using OnyX (a free program) allows you to speed up and increase the stability of your Mac in dozens of ways. This is the “Swiss Army knife” of OS X troubleshooting tools. It will check the status of your hard drive(s), you can rebuild the Spotlight index if you’re having problems with Spotlight, clear System caches and much, much more.

3. Recover Disk Space / Delete Unused Files

One way to recover a lot of disk space on your Macs hard drive is to delete the unused language files on your Mac. Another outstanding way to determine how your disk space is being used is to run Disk Inventory X (a free program) to scan your drive. The results are displayed in a very easy-to-use manner and you may discover huge files on your Mac that you don’t need/forgot about etc.

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4. Minimize Widgets

Widgets in your Dashboard are kind of neat, but on the whole – mostly unnecessary. Having a very cluttered Dashboard means you’re running a bunch of programs that you don’t use very often and they take up system resources that could be allocated to programs you’re actually using. Having a few Widgets running generally won’t slow your Mac down – having a lot of them running, will. So disable those cool but not-really-needed Widgets in your Dashboard.

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5. Properly Uninstall Applications

While OS X makes it very simple to uninstall programs (just drag them to the Trash!) – many times there are actually files and folders that are not deleted and just ‘left behind’. Using AppTrap will ensure that those files and folders are deleted. You still uninstall Applications by dragging them to the Trash, but with AppTrap installed all of the files and folders associated with that App will be deleted.

6. Empty the iPhoto Trash

One way to speed up iPhoto (and save disk space) – is to regularly delete the photos in iPhotos Trash. That’s right – iPhoto has its own Trash. iPhoto stores all images in its own database. As that database becomes bigger and bigger, iPhoto can become slower (and more prone to crashing). When you ‘delete’ a photo from iPhoto it actually puts that file in a separate Trash, but it remains in the same database. To really delete those files you have to empty its Trash. Fortunately, it’s extremely easy. Just open iPhoto, select the iPhoto item from the Menu Bar, and then click Empty iPhoto Trash from the drop-down menu. That’s it!

7. Stop Less Used Apps From Starting Automatically

Assuming you have more than a few programs installed on your Mac, some of them are probably configured to start automatically each time your Mac boots up. It’s important to periodically check to see exactly which Apps are being automatically launched, and if they need to be. This tutorial will show you exactly how to locate and stop those unnecessary programs from starting up each time your Mac does.

8. Keep a Clean Desktop

As Lifehacker points out:

Because of the way OS X’s graphical system works, the icons on your desktop take up a lot more of your resources than you may realize.

The solution? Keep a clean desktop! If you’re really used to saving/storing files on your Desktop, you’ve got to change that habit. Once you become accustomed to not saving files on your desktop, it becomes second nature. Your Mac will thank you for it.

9. Use Time Machine

Another possible “well that’s obvious” tip – use Time Machine to make backups of your Mac. Never mind that having a backup is painfully important just to make sure you don’t lose files – it’s every bit as important so you can recover your Mac should it crash.

10. Repair Disk Permissions

Once again, this is where using OnyX is the easiest way to accomplish this task. If a file or folder has the wrong ‘permissions’ it can cause a wide variety of errors – from OS X not functioning as it should to a specific App not working. As an alternative to OnyX, you can also use the Disk Utility program that comes with your Mac to verify and then repair Disk Permissions. Note: repairing disk permissions technically will not speed up your Mac, but it will ensure Applications and the operating system are running properly. And it certainly speeds up the time it takes to troubleshoot problems.

11. Upgrading Hardware

Upgrading your hardware is the “#11″ in this top 10 list. Depending on the type of Mac you have, you may not have many options when it comes to hardware upgrades. For example, if you own a MacBook Air, you can’t upgrade the RAM (memory) at all as it’s soldered to the motherboard. If you have a Mac Pro (Desktop) you have many hardware upgrades available – video cards, RAM, hard drives etc. Aside from the MacBook Air, you can upgrade the RAM on most other Macs (MacBooks, MacBook Pros, iMacs etc) and hard drives on many as well. Use the System Information App located in your Applications -> Utilities folder to determine the specific model of your Mac, and then use Google to determine what hardware upgrades your Mac is capable of.

If you’re able to add more RAM, that’s where you’ll get the most ‘bang for your buck’. I’ve consistently found that Crucial RAM works best (and you can always find great deals on Amazon). Again, use Google to research how much RAM your specific Mac can use, and make your purchase accordingly. If you have any issues getting your Mac to recognize newly installed RAM, see the tutorial on how to “zap the PRAM”. Another way to significantly speed up your Mac is to install an SSD (solid state drive) – if your Mac is capable of using one (and currently doesn’t have one installed). Upgrading from a traditional hard drive to an SSD drive will significantly speed up your Mac, though it’s not an inexpensive upgrade (SSD drives are still quite expensive). Upgrading the memory or hard drive on your Mac is also something you can do. There are dozens if not hundreds of great video tutorials on YouTube that will show you exactly how to do it yourself, step by step. Having Apple upgrade your hardware for you can be very costly – doing it yourself will save you a good deal of money.

If you have any tips on how to speed up your Mac – please share them in the comments!

User Submitted Tips

Here are some great user-submitted tips on speeding up your Mac –

1. The folks over at OS X Daily have a great (and brief) tutorial on how to stop Time Machine from creating local backups (they’re created on your primary hard drive, not the drive you use for Time Machine). This can use up a fair bit of disk space on your primary drive – space you could be using for Applications or other files. It also uses a lot of CPU while the process is taking place, which will slow your Mac down considerably as it’s happening. Keep in mind – this is only something you want to disable if you make regular Time Machine backups – which you should be doing already :) – Thanks for the tip Nick!

This brief tutorial will show you where to locate the list of programs that automatically start up each time your Mac does, and how to remove them from that list.

1. Select the Apple Button from your Menu Bar, and then System Preferences… from the drop-down list.



2. Select Users & Groups from the System section.


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3. Click the Login Items tab.


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4. Here’s the list of all the programs that are set to launch each time your Mac boots. If you see any entries that have a “yellow sign” next to them (as illustrated in the image below) – determine if it’s related to a program you previously removed. It’s possible that part of that program didn’t properly uninstall, and that’s something you should remove from your Login Items immediately. Then scroll through the list and determine if you actually need to have each item run every time your Mac starts. If it’s a program you don’t use very frequently – remove it from this list. You an always run it whenever you need to actually use it. To remove an item, select it and then click the small “minus sign” ( - ) button.

   
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5. Not only will your Mac start up faster with fewer items in this list, you’ll have more resources available each time you restart.


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This brief tutorial will show you how to stop the content of txt/sms messages from displaying on your iPhone’s “Lock Screen”.

By default (as illustrated in the image below) your iPhone will ‘wake up’ and display incoming TXT/SMS messages as they arrive.

This can be an issue if you don’t want people to see those messages and your iPhone is just laying around. Here’s how you can stop the content of the message from being displayed and still be notified when a new one arrives.

1. Tap the Settings button on your iPhone.



2. Tap Notifications



3. Scroll down to Messages and select it.



4. Scroll down to the Show Preview ON/OFF switch, and toggle it to OFF



5. Now when you receive text messages your screen will still turn on, but the notification will only include the name of the person and the type of message (in this case a Text Message) – not the contents of the message itself.



6. If you want to completely disable Lock Screen notifications for your received text messages, go back to Settings -> Notifications -> Messages and then scroll down to the View in Lock Screen ON/OFF switch, and toggle it to OFF.



7. That’s it!

If you’re at all like me when it comes to looking up names, your first thought is the persons first name. By default, the iPhone (and iPad, and iPod Touch) Contacts App sorts your contacts by last name. Here’s how to switch that so they’re sorted by first name.

1. As you can see, by default, your contacts will be sorted by Last Name. Lets switch that.



2. Tap the Settings button.



3. Tap the Mail, Contacts, Calendars entry.



4. Scroll down to the Contacts section. From here, tap the Last, First entry next to Sort Order.



5. Select the First, Last option (make sure it has a check-mark next to it to confirm it has been properly selected). Then tap the Mail… button to return to the previous screen.



6. The Sort Order should now be listed as First, Last.



7. Return to your Contacts App to make sure the change was applied.



8. That’s it!

This in depth guide will walk you through all the steps of using OnyX, a free multifunction App for OS X that allows you to troubleshoot common problems and speed up your Mac.

1. First things first, lets install OnyX. Head over to the OnyX download page and download the version for your OS. For example, if you’re using OS X 10.7, make sure to download the version for 10.7 (Lion). If you’re using OS X 10.8, make sure to download the version for 10.8 (Mountain Lion). Once the file has successfully downloaded, open it. Drag OnyX.app to your Applications folder to install it.



2. Close every possible open App on your Mac. In fact, it would be a good idea to reboot your Mac now, so that OnyX is working with as few “running in the background” processes as possible.
3. Launch OnyX from your Applications folder.



4. Right away, OnyX will want to run a check on the S.M.A.R.T. status of your hard drive. Click Continue to let it.


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5. The process doesn’t take very long.


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6. Next, OnyX will want to verify your Startup disk. Again, click Continue.


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7. This process can take a bit longer, though no longer than a couple of minutes.


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8. Click OK when it’s done.



9. Now, enter your password in the spaces provided and click OK.



10. The main OnyX interface will appear. Select the Automation tab.


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11. If/when the Help file opens on its own, click the red button to close it.



12. The Automation section is kind of the ‘one stop shop’ for a lot of the features that OnyX brings to the table. Generally, leaving the defaults selected and clicking the Execute button will be enough to not only speed up your Mac, but improve its stability (fewer crashes). This tutorial will go into more depth and cover each section of OnyX, but for now, click the Execute button.


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13. Click the Continue button to close any open Applications.



14. Now OnyX will run a series of scripts and programs. This can take a while. Don’t be surprised if your Mac seems to ‘stall’ at times – this is completely normal.


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15. Once OnyX has completed its tasks, click the OK button.



16. It’s very important that you restart your Mac now. Click the Restart button.



17. Try using your Mac for a while and see if you can notice a speed improvement. If you were suffering from strange ‘crashes’ – see if they still happen. Note: some programs will take longer to open the first time after you’ve run OnyX. This is due to OnyX cleaning the Font Cache. Each subsequent time you open the program, it will open at its ‘normal’ speed (much more quickly).
18. If that didn’t seem to do the trick, or you just want to see all of the features that OnyX offers, launch OnyX again from your Applications folder. It will want to run a S.M.A.R.T. status check again – this time you can click Cancel.



19. However, you will want to run the Startup Volume verification test again, so click Continue.


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20. Again, give it a minute or two to run.


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21. Click OK



22. Enter your password when prompted.



23. This time we’ll start from the beginning. Select the Verify tab. Select the S.M.A.R.T. Status sub-menu, and make sure the Last check: is a relatively recent date. If you’ve followed the steps in this tutorial so far, it will be.


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24. Now select the Maintenance tab from the top. Select the Permissions sub-menu. If you’re still experiencing problems with your Mac, place a check in the box labeled Reset home directory permissions and ACLs, then click the Execute button.


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25. Repairing permissions can take a while, so give it some time.


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26. Once the permissions have been checked and repaired, a log file of the changes made will appear in the main window.


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27. If you’re prompted to restart your Mac, do so. Relaunch OnyX and repeat the “cancel S.M.A.R.T. verification but run the startup volume verification process” procedure, again. Return to the Maintenance tab.
28. Select the Scripts sub-menu. Make sure that the scripts listed have all been run relatively recently. They should have been. If not, click the Execute button. Again, you might have to restart your Mac once the process has completed.


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29. Select the Rebuild sub-menu from the Maintenance section. If you’ve been having trouble with Spotlight, place a check in the box next to Spotlight index and click the Execute button. This will rebuild your Spotlight index – and can take quite some time. If the contents of your folders hasn’t been displaying properly, place a check in the box next to Display of folders’ contents and click the Execute button. Both/either of these processes will take quite some time to complete, so be prepared to wait a while. Once they’ve completed, you will need to restart your Mac (and will be prompted to do so).


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30. Now select the Cleaning tab. From the System sub-menu, you can clean a number of the System Caches. Clearing these can help troubleshoot a system prone to crashes – click the Execute button to start the process. As usual, you’ll have to reboot once it’s done.


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31. Select the Cleaning tab again, and this time the User sub-menu. From here you can delete a number of the user caches. Yes, you’ll need to reboot once it’s done.


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32. One of the more common reasons for system slow-downs is that the Font caches need to be cleared. Select the Fonts sub-menu and place a check next to each of the listed items. It’s important to mention again – many Applications will take longer than usual to open up again the first time after you’ve cleared Font caches. Each subsequent time you open that program, it will open at it’s normal speed. Click the Execute button.


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33. OnyX will close any open programs.



34. Then it will clean your user caches. Click OK once the process has completed.



35. Reboot.



36. Select the Logs sub-menu from the Cleaning section. From here you can clear your System Log files. Generally, this won’t help much with stability issues or speeding up your Mac – but it can recover some disk space (not much). If you want to delete them anyway, click the Execute button.


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37. Select the Misc. tab. To understand exactly what you can delete from this section, click the Help button in the bottom left corner of the screen.


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38. Review each item before you decide if you want to delete it.


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39. Select the Trash tab. As expected, from here you can empty your Trash. Moving on.


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40. Select the Parameters tab. From here you can change various features of OS X that aren’t usually readily accessible, but by and large not many of these changes will speed up your Mac or help resolve any troubleshooting related issues. Review each feature just in case there’s something you would like to change about OS X. Use the Help menu (click the Help button in the lower left corner of the screen) for a detailed explanation of what each feature does.


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41. That’s it! OnyX isn’t a tool you’ll need to use every day, or even every week. If you notice your Mac is starting to slow down, or you’re experiencing more errors/crashes than usual – that’s when to run through it again.

If you’ve recently noticed that Java Apps/Applets are not working in Safari or Firefox on your Mac – here’s the fix.

1. If you’re using OS X 10.6 or lower, Java will come included in OS X. If you’re having trouble, select the Apple Button from the Menu Bar and select Software Update…. Install any updates that relate to Java.
2. If you’re using OS X 10.7 or later, launch Safari or Firefox and visit the web site https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/plugincheck. Note: Java will not work in Google Chrome as it is a 32bit App and Java requires 64bit Apps.

   Scroll down to the section titled Java Applet Plug-in. Likely, the STATUS will be set to Outdated Version. Click the Update button.


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3. Click the “Download button” (small red arrow pointing down) to download the Java package.



4. If the file doesn’t download correctly, “right-click” (ctrl+click) the image and select Download Linked File.



5. Once the file has downloaded, locate it in your Downloads folder and double-click it. Then, double-click Java 7 Update xx.pgk to run the installer.



6. The installation process is painfully straight forward. Click the Continue button.



7. When prompted, enter your password and click the Install Software button.



8. Quit Safari (or Firefox) and then revisit the web site https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/plugincheck. This time, you should see that Java Applet Plug-In is set to Up to Date.


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9. You should no longer have any problem running Java Applets/games etc in your browser.