Announcing Mactuts+ — Mac & OS X Tutorials, Guides & How To’s!

Announcing Mactuts+ — Mac & OS X Tutorials, Guides & How To’s!

on Jul 9th 2012 with 53 comments

We’re excited to let you know about the latest addition to the Tuts+ family — Mactuts+!

Mactuts+ is focused on teaching you how to use your Mac more effectively, efficiently, and powerfully. You’ll learn about the basics of OS X, how to switch, how to use accessories and time-saving software, work with your Mac in an enterprise setting, and how to save time with advanced productive tips and tricks.

Read on to find out more, and learn about our $1,000 competition!

What to Expect on Mactuts+

Mactuts+ is focused on teaching you how to use your Mac more effectively, efficiently, and powerfully. We’ll be covering a wide range of different techniques, and offering advice on everything from customising your desktop and using OS X, to automating complex tasks and delving into Terminal. So whether you’re completely new to OS X or you’re a seasoned pro, we’ve got you covered!

We’ll be publishing a combination of step-by-step written tutorials and screencasts/video lessons. In most weeks we’ll be publishing 4-5 high quality tutorials, so make sure to subscribe to the Mactuts+ RSS feed so you don’t miss a thing.

If you think you have the skills to create a screencast or text and image tutorial for Mactuts+, it’s easy to familiarize yourself with the guidelines and pitch your idea. We’re hungry for user contributions and pay great money for tutorials.

Win $1,000 — Submit Your Tips & Tricks!

We’re excited to let you know about our Mactuts+ launch competition, giving you the chance to win $1,000 to put towards a new Mac! You just need to submit a short screencast that showcases your favourite OS X tip, trick, or shortcut.

We’d love to find out more about how you use your Mac productively, and discover the tips and tricks that help to speed up your workflow. These might be related to a particular app, something built into OS X, an automator action, terminal command, or anything else!

Find out how to enter

Subscribe, Follow & Stay Up To Date

Don’t forget to follow Mactuts+ on Twitter, Facebook, and everywhere else! Here’s how to keep up to date with what’s going on:

Our First Few Posts…

If you’d like to delve straight into the content, here are a few quick links to our first handful of posts on Mactuts+. We hope you find them useful — it’s a good taster of what’s to come!

  • Preparing Your Mac for Mountain Lion

    Preparing Your Mac for Mountain Lion

    Apples next big operating system is set to release in the middle of this month and its likely that youll be one of the many users who are upgrading from Snow Leopard or Lion. Its not surprising, either, because there are a lot of great features in this update and its going to be the same price for users of either of the aforementioned versions. In light of that, why not update to version 10.8, Mountain Lion?

    Visit Article

  • 4 Easy Ways to Automate Your Mac’s Schedule

    Easy Ways to Automate Your Mac’s Schedule

    Your Mac comes with lots of ways to schedule tasks, but not all of it’s ready to go out of the box. Beyond automated maintenance, OS X has a lot going for it, but you have to put in a bit of elbow grease to get everything working how you want it and on your schedule.

    Visit Article

  • How To Migrate All of Your Important Data To Your New Mac

    How To Migrate All of Your Important Data To Your New Mac

    We recently saw another WWDC come and go and despite little to no progress in the desktop area, the MacBooks all received nice upgrades. This means there’s a fresh crop of users transitioning to a brand new machine, a task which always brings with it a decent number of questions.

    Visit Article

David Appleyard is davidappleyard on Themeforest
Tags: News
 
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David Appleyard is a designer and writer based in the UK. He manages Tuts+, along with having founded several design websites including Design Shack and PixelsDaily.  

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  • http://rommelxcastro.com Romme

    mac+, that’s the best you can do?

  • http://laranz.in Lawrence77

    That’s cool for MAC users :)

  • http://www.udgwebdev.com Caio Ribeiro Pereira

    Nice!! This is will be very useful for me!

  • Mario

    Where’s servers.tutsplus.com?

    :(

    • JoeMoe

      I second this one too! I would love to see a tutorial section only based on server administration or something similar. Net Tuts just posted one on Apache which I would love to see more stuff on.

  • Corey Schram

    Hah. Mac user’s *would* need a whole website of tutorials to teach them how to use their own preferred operating system.

    • Rick

      You really want to open that can of worms? Grow up.

  • Jesus Bejarano

    I am going to say this in spanish since it would be very offensive to users of this site…que les pasa osea que paso con mi writingtut+, que tonteria es esta idea, almenos seria mejor un linuxtut+, enserio que se laxaron con esto :(.

  • Hamid

    That’s a good idea! Fantastic!

  • TJ

    Easily the least exciting tuts site release on the network. Whoop-dee-do.

  • http://wouterj.nl/ Wouter J

    A very dark day for the tuts+ family :(

    Why do you prefer Mac over Linux or Windows? Why don’t you create a tuts+ site that descripes PC in general, not only a Mac.

    The tuts+ family is a family with very good sites about programming and desiging, about the web. Why break that rule and add a Mac site? Why do we need a Mac site?? What is so interesting about a Mac? Does Apple need some advertising? Do you get paid for making a tuts+ site about Macs? Or what is the reason behind launching Mactuts+??

    Some weeks ago we had a Poll about which tuts+ site you should launce: http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/news/which-tuts-site-should-we-launch-next
    Can we get the results of that? I cannot imagine that Mac+ had won, because in the comments Gamedev+ won and Writing+ was second. From the first 60 comments there are only 2 mac+ users!

    • http://davidappleyard.net David Appleyard
      Author

      Hey Wouter,

      We’re still publishing all our fantastic content related to programming and designing, but we’re also branching out into new areas!

      We think there’s lots of room to make a Mac site that delves into lots of the finer detail about automation, AppleScript, and the interesting things you can do with the OS. Who knows — if it goes well, we may do a similar thing with other platforms in the future…

      Loads of people requested Mactuts+ in the poll, but you’ll be interested to know that this won’t be our only site launch this month. We’re working hard behind the scenes to launch another of the highly requested ideas… That’s all I can say for now!

      • http://wouterj.nl Wouter J

        Thank you for your reaction.

        I really look forward to see Writing+, so let’s hope…

        >> “Who knows — if it goes well, we may do a similar thing with other platforms in the future…”
        Are your really think this happend? To be honestly, I don’t think, almost all the editors of the Tuts+ community are using Mac…

        And you forgot one thing to do: Add the Mac+ site to the family list (at the right side of the logo).

  • Reinier Kaper

    Unfortunately, I have to agree with a couple of the above posters: probably the most disappointing addition to the family so far.

    I know a lot of you guys develop on a Mac (which, in my opinion, is a little moot in the first place as you need to run Parallels to test out most used browsers and than still miss out old IE stuff), but I think the poll called for something else.

    Ah well…

    • http://davidappleyard.net David Appleyard
      Author

      We’re certainly not ignoring the response from the recent poll. Check back around the end of this month for a few more exciting announcements :-)

    • http://www.nouveller.com/ Benjamin Reid
      • http://iamkeir.com iamkeir

        @Ben: BOOM!

        More importantly – teach what they know? If they have the skills in house to provide tutorials for OS X, then why not use them?

        This isn’t Mac vs PC – this is just taking knowledge available about a piece of tech (in this case, OS X) and providing some useful tutorials. Isn’t it?

      • Reinier Kaper

        Granted, that website works very well, although it’s a paid service, but you do get the real deal.
        Unless you do 100% of your development remotely, it still (in my opinion) makes more sense to use the most widely used platform as a basis, but maybe that’s just a matter of preference ;-)

    • http://envexlabs.com Matt Vickers

      If you’re on a PC, you still have to run something like IETester to test in older versions of IE.

      When using a mac, I can browser test mac versions of popular browsers as well as running VM’s of dedicated version of IE. IMO, I get a better browser test environment working on a mac than I would working on a PC.

      • http://wouterj.nl Wouter J

        If you are on a PC you have the normal IE9 installed. With the developer tools (F12) you can switch from version between IE7 and IE9. So you don’t have to download IETester.

        If I download the major browsers (chrome, firefox, safari, opera) I have a complete view about how my website looks in browsers, even in IE7, without creating VM’s.

      • http://envexlabs.com Matt Vickers

        The compatibility modes in IE8 and IE9 are intended to allow you to do exactly what you’re asking — to test your site for all IE versions while only having a single version of IE on your machine.

        It’s a great idea in principle. Unfortunately, microsoft messed it up. While the compatibility modes do indeed replicate IE7 and IE8, they also have their own bugs and issues which do not occur either in the parent browser nor in the browser they are attempting to emulate.

        In effect, the compatibility modes are actually another set of different browsers. You can’t rely on them to accurately show you what your site looks like in IE7, but at the same time you do still need to test with them in case you have users who are running in compatibility mode for whatever reason.

        Taken from: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6491295/testing-ie7-ie8-using-ie9-developer-tools-right-document-mode-to-replicate-t

      • Jon

        Wouter,

        The developer tools are not as reliable as you might think. I have found big differences in renderings compared to that of proper browser instances.

        Also, you have a different Javascript engine running compared to the original browsers when testing using that environment, creating more differences.

        The best way you can test is using the original software, and VMs are currently the best way to achieve this if you need multiple instances in my opinion.

  • Ayub

    Why would you make tutorials for a proprietary OS that can only be run on over priced proprietary hardware? Linuxtuts would be much better, since almost all development tools support it, it’s very likely it matches peoples production servers, not to mention it is free and you can run it on a kerosene powered cheese grater (credit: Arch Linux) if you wanted.

  • arnold

    im dissapointed too….

    make a…

    windowstuts+ , then im happy cause windows has more userbase too,

  • eric

    after the events of last month I would prefer that envato created securitytuts+

    ; )

  • http://kustomdesigner.com mike

    What about Windows Tuts+? I am with Wouter J on this, Macs are becoming a trend, I can build a PC way better than anything I can get from Apple for $2k but hey if people want to throw their money away then have at it. I just can’t seem to get past the fact of how much of a waste this is, sure Mac lovers will probably love it ,but for the rest of us its a waste. How about a design tus+ or a security tuts+ or even a accessibility tuts+? Now all 3 of those would be useful…. but as far as teaching Mac users how to click and wipe at the same time, I just don’t see the point……

  • http://www.justforthealofit.com/ TheAL

    Gonna have to join the growing crowd of disappointed readers. I know pandering to the “cool kids” and Apple user base is all the rage in the tech blogging world right now, which isn’t helped by the fact that so many designers and developers communally bask in it, but it’s definitely not without some deficit of integrity.

    WP-Tuts wasn’t so bad. As much as I would have liked CMS-Tuts instead, with lots of coverage for things like Drupal and everything else, the massive ubiquity of WordPress kind of dictated that one. However, in this case, I would have much more preferred something like Server-Tuts, Os-Tuts, Comp-Tuts. Heck, maybe even IT-Tuts. And if you want to reach the largest user base, like it or not, Win-Tuts would have made more sense. Hopefully, if this sites does very well, you’ll change/expand it to accommodate other platforms.

  • Sam

    I would love to know why this site was chosen?

    Judging by the poll and responses here, no one seems interested in mac tutorials…? And there are already far too many other blogs which cover this kind of thing…

    Why not try something unique which isn’t offered elsewhere? I’m sure that would be much more successful…

  • VICKY

    Agree With WOUTER J

  • vasu
  • Jack

    I do love the Envato websites, but I cannot see how this will offer anything more than http://mac.appstorm.net/

    The last thing I want to see is Envato becoming diluted.

  • thecodingdude

    This is sad. you do NOT need a tuts+ site for an operating system (really, you don’t). If this is the case what about Windows.tutsplus, Ubuntu.tutsplus, Gentoo.tutsplus, centOS.tutsplus, iOS.tutsplus and the list goes on and on….

  • http://www.stephenmdixon.com Stephen Dixon

    I’m with the rest of the commenters here. I don’t understand (at all) why you would want a tutorial site for Mac users. Envato already has a Mac-related website over on their AppStorm sub-network.

  • http://www.nouveller.com/ Benjamin Reid

    Guys, why are you all so negative? They’re releasing free, quality content – there’s nothing wrong with that.

    • arnold

      we just care about the tuts+ network…. :)

  • http://notes.kloop.kg Said Kaldybaev

    yeah, I voted to another topic, but why MAC ???

  • Matt

    I also view this negatively.

    More and more do I find articles based upon Mac driven tools and applications. I also wish that in those cases, there would be at least a link to a Windows/Linux alternative. For instance the recent tutorial “What’s This Meteor Thing?” – the whole article is based upon Mac, without any pointers as to what to do for Win/Linux users, even a link to the developers page regarding other platforms would be sufficient. I know, I know.. Google is just a click away, but it doesn’t seem fair for others. It’s as though the Envato team acknowledges solely Mac users without any regard to other OS users. I don’t remember a recent tutorial that was based on Windows, and come to think of it, I don’t remember seeing ANY tutorials based solely upon using Linux. Some tutorials are made with, for instance Coda which is only available for Mac users, and the functionality is promoted of it (snippets, plugins etc.), why is that? Why not constantly ant methodically use text editors that are cross platform, such as Sublime, VI(M) or even IDEs such as Aptana, Eclipse, Netbeans? Then we could all share the same functionalities and also be capable of applying what we learn here to all platforms, instead of a singled out OS?

    In this case, I would’ve personally preferred a general OS tutorial website, where there would be not only Mac tutorials but Windows and most importantly of all – Linux, such as what we have with mobiletuts. Why was Mac chosen? Linux would be the most logical choice I think, most servers run linux, most server applications are solely written to support Linux, not some .. excuse me.. lame ass OS X Server edition, which is essentialy the same thing as Ubuntu Server edition – poorly configured preinstalled server applications, with massive deployment leading to huge security issues. And also Windows and Mac are equally capable of running the same applications – Adobe (photoshop, illustrator etc..), servers (apache, mysql, php etc) and so on. So what will the Mac tutorials be? How to set a background or something? Cron jobs? Terminal based apps? When will you eventually run out of ideas, and do you (Envato team) really think you’ll be producing grade A content that is not available elsewhere?

    I also do not like this branching of sister based sites. I believe Envato has enough structure and rather than expanding and wasting time on generic tutorials that the internet is littered with, but rather focus on improving the content, as lately I found myself visiting these sites less and less, as the content is becoming mediocre and not interesting. More in depth articles and less “Quick tips” which are some sort of shortcuts that most of us will not use, and “the 100th framework for writing HTML/CSS/JS code faster”, or “here’s yet ANOTHER PHP/JS framework this week that we should start a mini-series on”. I do love tutorials, like the recent Hash functions, credit cards online, however the others I just quickly pass over, not even opening most of them ..

    • David

      As a business, mactuts+ makes perfect sense…. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57460254-93/mac-users-pay-more-than-pc-users-says-orbitz/

      It’s also worth mentioning that if you try to please everyone you end up pleasing no one. As a business its better to be loved by a few than merely liked by a lot. Finding loyal users that love and value your product is paramount (not to mention users with deep pockets). I bet a generic OStuts+ would not be as effective as mactuts+… time will tell.

      • Matt

        This is an article related to hotels, not software sales. Apples deployment levels are still low compared to the PC market. Apple still lags behind Windows by 16:1. That means, for every 16 PC’s sold , only 1 is an Apple computer. And that just counts current period sales, not counting older devices. Remember, just a couple years ago, Apple lagged behind at the rate of 50:1. So the market is far bigger for Windows period. Thus stating that it makes perfect sence for a Mactuts than other OS based on a CNET article about hotels is just .. foolish and irresponsible. Even if that’s true, that Mac users spend more money on software per-user (and I do believe that is true if counting the iTunes App Store), that still doesn’t really mean anything, as there are far more PC users than Mac, so saying that it’s better to develop applications for Mac rather than Windows based on per-user spending, will lead you to fewer sales in general, opposed to Windows. There is whole different story when it comes to tablets and phones, but we already have mobiletuts for that.

        Honestly I’m getting sick and tired of people praising Apple for its OSX, when it’s simply put – a castrated and hyped up *nix distrobution without right click. I see nothing special, and I don’t find any added value of paying 30-40% more than a PC. Apple fanboys took this thing way out of hand. I’m getting sick of explaining to people, that Macs are ACTUALLY vulnerable to viruses and malware, that they overpay dramatically for hardware, speed wise its slower with 3-D rendering and graphics intensive programs, no ability to upgrade by yourself (like .. install ram?) .. Every time these cons are mentioned, Apple fanboys somehow shut up, or maybe just grumble about a small thing like “Finder” as a major pro. With Macs what you get is something that’s nice to look at with a glowing bitten apple. Doesn’t matter how many times I’ve worked with Macs in the past and in the present, I cannot justify the price nor the hype it has attracted. Multi-tasking (keeping open programs) is just horrible, memory leakage just is off the roofs.. To me it seems that this fashion statement of sitting with a Mac in Starbucks is moving towards developers (such as even here), THANKFULLY not to the ones who don’t work in graphic intensive apps, as the core still generally work on PC based OSes. I’ve never (yet) seen a PERL/C++ dev sitting with a Mac and typing away, and thank god.

      • http://envexlabs.com Matt Vickers

        @Matt: Your post just reaks of bullshit.

        You basically took every PC-user-views-of-mac cliche and crammed it into a wall of text.

        Don’t like the new site, don’t visit it.

      • Eric

        I concur with @matt. My current primary pc is an iMac and I am posting this from my iPad. My next computer will be a windows 8, and I will get a slate pro as soon as it comes out. As much as I love my Mac I am more productive with windows. Hell I even like Ubuntu 12.04 better than OSX. Over priced and over hyped!

        enjoy your never ending cavalcade of AppleScript tutorials…..

      • Dean Tang

        I 100% agree with Matt.

        To expand, such as the Finder example – linux users are using locate which is the exact same thing just terminal based, since day one!! I also get pissed at Apple fanboys who don’t understand that they are talking about unix features, and promoting them as Mac only and using words like “inovation”, “state-of-the-art” etc etc, when those features get rolled out. Hate to burst your bubble Apple fanboys, we linux users had them for 20+ years, while you’re only getting them now, and dumbed down versions of what we use anyway.

    • Reinier Kaper

      I love your honesty and I agree ;-)
      I’ve actually known 1 developer doing C++ on a Mac… He’s also fired recently ;-)

      I’m totally cool with people developing on a Mac, whatever they like, but this Tuts site is a poor choice at best and (I think) more in line with internal beliefs than ‘need’ of the community.

    • Richard M. Stallman

      What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

      Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use.

      Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

  • sidyll

    I wonder how many negative comments (from Mac users) would exist here had this addition been wintuts+

  • Mac

    I would prefer sexTuts+

  • Stan

    Sounds like a great addition to tutsplus family ;)
    Visiting this new site will sure be a part of my daily routine.

  • Vic

    Thank you net tuts! I am a software developer with an open mind perception of technology. I have never had a chance to develop on mac, except for web apps using netbeans and coda, so I am extremely interested in any material related to native OSX and IOS development.
    This is a great incentive to start exploring the platform from a more technical perspective.

    Can´t wait to start reading!

    Thanks again!

  • Shawn

    I have to agree with the majority of comments on here. I find this an uninteresting choice of topic because like a lot of others on this site, I don’t use a Mac.

    Personally, I would have preferred to have seen a site that catered for users of open sourced software, like Gnu Linux, Gimp, Inkscape, etc.

  • Mert

    Didn’t like this WHY? Because I think that we can learn more from linux then Mac so what about Linux+ ??

  • Kenny L

    Very nice. Look forward to checking the site daily!

    I love all the childish Mac vs PC comments…grow up guys.

    How many of you Mac bashers have actually used OS X? Please. Being Unix based, OS X is inherently amazing for programming, and while I still do have Debian running in a VM, I find myself in OS X most of the time ever since finding out about Homebrew, which I use to install ports of GNU/Linux packages. 9 out of 10 times whatever I need is available, and if not it’s trivial to roll your own brew. Coding in Python, Ruby and C/C++ is generally a much more pleasant experience on *nix. Coding C# is another story, and whenever I’m doing anything .NET of course I’ll boot into Windows. But Python or C? No way.

    Also, OSX fans, you can’t deny that we still have to boot into Windows the majority of the time for most recent games(that is, if you do game)…Steam for Mac is alright, but it’s just not there yet. In fact, it’s safe to say gaming in OSX may never catch up, so why not appreciate OSX for what it’s good at, namely providing a sound developer’s environment for anyone who knows what their doing? Each particular OS has its place. Limiting yourself to one OS is very ignorant and I question the integrity, as a programmer, of anyone who thinks one OS is superior in all ways.

  • Will

    I love the Tuts+ sites, but this sounds a lot like Mac Appstorm from the description. It’s also possible I didn’t interpret that right so I can’t develop a valid opinion until I actually read posts on the site.

  • John

    Every new beginning has friends and …enemies.

    Congratulations guys. Keep up the good work. I will be a daily visitor for sure.