Hidden within the command-line is an extremely useful utility named textutil. With it, you can convert a wide variety of different text document formats.
MacIssues goes into more detail about how you can use this command, which can be very useful if you don't necessarily have a suitable app to open it in.
Mac Power Users co-host Katie Floyd has written a definitive guide on creating the best possible strategy for backing up your Mac, from Time Machine and disk clones to offsite backups. If you're serious about keeping your data safe then this is a must-read.
Fusion Drive is a utility that combines an SSD and traditional hard drive into a single storage space. Your Mac then automatically manages where data is stored, moving files and apps between the SSD and HDD depending on how often they're used. It's a great compromise between SSD's high speed and HDD's large capacity.
While Fusion Drive is officially only supported on an iMac or Mac mini purchased with an SSD and HDD combination, it can be set up on any supported Mac. Macworld published a useful guide back in 2012 on how to do this and after a few minutes in Terminal, you'll have a fully working Fusion Drive set up and ready to use.
Rick Stawarz builds upon David Sparks' method of automatically putting a Mac to sleep using Drafts on iOS and makes uses of Launch Center Pro, offering a great one-tap solution to sleep your Mac.
Back in June, Apple discontinued development of Aperture. A move that wasn't all that surprising considering how long it had been since it had received a major update.
While there isn't anything wrong with continuing to use Aperture, the lack of updates will mean that any outstanding bugs or new features will never be worked upon, so many are now switching to Adobe Lightroom.
Aperture Vs Lightroom has published a comprehensive migration guide, going far beyond Adobe's own PDF migration guide by covering everything from metadata to flags and labels.
The release of Mavericks brought about many changes, though one that has been unwelcome to some was the altering of the Power key's default behaviour. Prior to this version of OS X, pressing the Power key would bring up a dialog box asking you to select whether you'd like to Restart, Sleep or Shut Down the Mac.
Now that pressing the key puts the Mac to sleep, it's become a hard habit to break for those that have used the Mac platform for many years. Fortunately, Mac|Life explain how to change this behaviour back using a simple command in Terminal.
If you’re responsible for the configuration of tens, if not hundreds, of brand-new Macs then you’ll probably know how time consuming it can be to get them all set up. The process of setting up a user account, installing any required software and applying all of the available updates on each and every Mac before handing them to users can be both laborious and horribly inefficient.
Mac Administration Basics brings together six of our previously published guides for easy reference, incredibly useful when wanting to deploy, troubleshoot or configure Macs at home or in the workplace.
Members of The Instructional can download this for free by using their unique coupon code during checkout.
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Whether you're using an external hard drive for backup purposes or to provide additional storage for your Mac, it's important to make sure that whatever information it contains is as secure as possible. By default, an external hard drive can be accessed on any other Mac without hinderance, so even if you have FileVault 2 enabled on your Mac but you're backing up to an unencrypted hard drive, it's rather redundant.
OS X can encrypt volumes located on external hard drives and USB sticks in just a few clicks, making it impossible to view the contents of a volume on *any* Mac unless the correct password is provided.
Read MoreBradley Chambers has a bunch of great tips on freeing up some space on your iOS device, especially useful for those of us on 16GB devices who are frequently getting close to their capacity.
While some of the tips may seem rather obvious (for example, deleting apps), there's a lot of great information about spring cleaning to reclaim storage space that you may not even realise was missing.
Switching audio input and output sources in OS X is made quick and easy thanks to a keyboard shortcut and contextual menu.
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