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OS X 10.9 Mavericks is still in development, with Apple only weeks into having released its first preview of the new operating system to its developer and testing communities.

For people who want to install and manage Mavericks in virtual machine environments, Parallels has a new update available that will support the installation of Mavericks in a virtual machine, allowing for testing of code and the new operating system's features without potentially compromising the main operating system installation.

The update is about 325MB in size and can be installed by choosing "Check for Updates" in the … Read more

Do you have an external hard drive that you cannot write to on your Mac? While most external storage media's default formatting and other setups should make them both readable and writable on most Mac systems, there may be times when this is not the case.

NTFS formatting The first detail to check is if the drive is formatted to the popular NTFS format used in Windows systems. Often commercially available drives will be formatted to FAT32 and therefore be fully compatible with both Windows and OS X; however, many popular drives (especially high-capacity ones) may be formatted to … Read more

When using your Mac, active programs, documents, and system resources will be loaded into memory (RAM), where they can be accessed quickly to run and perform computations. While active memory contents are maintained in memory, the system also keeps some recently used but inactive processes and data there in order to quickly revive them, if needed.

These memory allotments should be managed dynamically for optimum performance, but some people who regularly run low on RAM may be concerned about this and resort to using "RAM cleaning" programs. One of these is the "purge" Terminal command that … Read more

For the past couple of months, prospective MacBook buyers, especially those looking for a slim MacBook Air, have been holding off on purchases, waiting to see what Apple had in store for its annual WWDC keynote.

While the new 11-inch and 13-inch Airs look and feel a lot like the previous couple of generations, the internal components have been upgraded with new, and incredibly energy efficient, CPUs, leading to battery life scores in excess of Apple's estimated 12 hours for the 13-inch version.

Because of that great battery life, you can bet that plenty of new MacBooks were ordered … Read more

If you have regularly used iTunes to purchase music and movies, then you may have a significant collection of titles that are tied to your specific iTunes account. However, if you have used more than one iTunes account, then you may run into trouble if you cannot remember the account ID you used to purchase the items.

At the very least, if the songs are DRM-protected and you have not authorized your system to play them, then iTunes will present you with a notice to log in to your account before it will play them.

While Apple offers a quick … Read more

Getting to a particular Preference Pane on a Mac is a two-step process. You must first open up System Preferences (via the Dock or Spotlight) before opening one of the preferences contained within. With free Mac app Preferences Quick Launch, you can shorten this process to one simple step. It lets you drag individual Preference Panes to your Dock or Launchpad, where you can access each directly.

After downloading Preference Quick Launch, unzipping it, and moving it to your Applications folder, open it to reveal 27 applications, each of which opens a Preference Pane. You can drag any of these … Read more

One of the new features touted by Apple in its upcoming OS X 10.9 Mavericks operating system is the multiple display management features that allow better integration with full-screen applications. However the new features come with other changes that, for some people, and especially those with more than two displays, may be a bit of a hindrance.

Recently an individual by the name "MrThaiBox123" posted on YouTube a small look at the new desktop management features in the current developer preview of OS X 10.9, which outlines the benefits as well as the drawbacks of these … Read more

Apple's new MacBook Air has adopted faster solid-state drives made by Samsung. But Apple won't be the only beneficiary.

Samsung announced Monday that it has started mass-producing new PCIe solid-state drives aimed at the next generation of ultrabooks. SSDs that use a PCIe connection offer faster speeds than those outfitted with SATA (Serial ATA) connections.

As one example, Samsung's XP941 SSD can read data sequentially at 1,400 megabytes (1.4 gigabytes) per second, the highest speed offered by a PCIe 2.0 interface. In the real world, that means the drive can read 500GB of data … Read more

Apple products aren't perfect, but they get a lot closer than most.

One reason for Apple's success can be summed up nicely in the 13-inch MacBook Pro Retina.

At first blush, it seems uncharacteristically pedestrian and unrefined for an Apple product. It doesn't have the usual Apple panache or design boldness. And it's thicker -- despite being smaller -- than the 15.4-inch Pro Retina. … Read more