Time Machine is Apple’s all-in-one backup solution that takes a snapshot of your hard drive and incrementally backs up any files that have changed since the previous backup. The default configuration is pretty sparse; there’s an On/Off slider, Disk Selection, and an Options area where you can exclude folders from the backup.

You might think hourly backups are a bit excessive. Apple does not give you a convenient way to change the default backup schedule. Luckily this is easy. Here are two ways you can change the hourly backup schedule to one of your choosing.

Command + M minimizes any given window in OS X’s Finder, but getting the window back from the dock is a different story. Unfortunately, Finder’s poor management of “un-minimizing” a window is maddeningly inconsistent and seemingly an obvious omission given the importance of such a feature. Here are five ways to un-minimize windows in OS X.

Whether it’s changing file names of pictures from “IMG_XXXX.jpg” to organizing your MP3s, batch file renaming can both save you time and reduce frustration.  Here are two free and easy ways to rename large groups of files in OS X.

Automator

Batch renaming in Automator is quite simple, even if you’ve never used it before.

1. Open Automator, choose “Custom” when the screen prompts you to select a starting point.
2. Drag the Automator action “Get Specified Finder Items” to the right-hand window pane.
3. Drag the Automator action “Rename Finder Items” to the right-hand window pane.

In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through the steps you need in order to change various strings in OS X’s Finder and iTunes. The same process can be applied to pretty much any other applications.

I find Leopard’s sidebar to be a very handy place to store my most frequently used folders and as a way to access any external or USB drives I have plugged in at the moment.  What I can’t stand, however, are the obnoxious capitalized categories (DEVICES, PLACES, etc.) that Apple forces upon us. Let’s change those to normal capitalization.