Some people have found that after upgrading to OS X Mavericks on their Apple Mac, it runs more slowly than it used to.

One of the reasons for this could be that the Mac is running short of memory for apps and a quick look at Activity Monitor shows that all the memory in use. Is it really out of memory? It might not be and it's not obvious how to read Activity Monitor's memory display.

A question posted in an Apple help forum was "How do I clean my Mac's disk drive?" The reply was "You don't need to do that on a Mac." It is one of the many myths surrounding the Mac and although it may be better than some operating systems, it certainly does need cleaning occasionally to get rid of the file clutter.

An email always has a From: that contains the sender's email address and sometimes it even contains a proper name. However, this is not an excuse to end an email improperly and not include a signature. A signature can contain more than just your name and it is an essential component of an email message. You may not have realised it, but you can create impressive signatures in Mail in OS X on the Mac.

Extensions can be added to the Safari web browser on the Apple Mac to add extra features or to make existing ones easier to use. There is a whole online gallery full of of them and one you might want to take a closer look at is Bing Highlights. It makes searching the web simpler.

When you hear about security flaws and patches, you immediately think about OS X, Safari, and other applications, but there are other gadgets and devices that can present security problems too. Apple has released two updates for Apple TV within a month, for example. Is yours up to date?

iPhoto on the Mac has some excellent editing facilities for enhancing photographs, fixing faults like brightness, saturation, contrast and so on. The usual way to edit a photo is to either double click it or to selected it and click Edit, but there is another way to edit photos and multiple images can be selected and edited simultaneously.

It can be very irritating to set off on a journey and end up stuck in traffic. You sit there burning petrol, adding to the greenhouse gasses, getting more and more frustrated. A simple 15 minute journey can become half an hour or more, or an hour can turn into two. If only you knew there was a traffic jam you could have either put off the journey till later or even another day if it wasn't important, or chosen another route if it was essential. With Maps on the Mac you can get bang up to date information on the road conditions before you set off.

Microsoft OneNote, part of the Office suite of applications, is now available from the Mac App Store for free. Just open the App Store, search for OneNote and install it. It is a 200MB+ download, so do it at home on a fast broadband connection rather than at a free Wi-Fi access point that might be slow or cost you money. It's a great app with a lovely design that is really useful for creating and storing notes.

In January LaCie, the premium brand of Seagate Technology, announced that it had developed the world's fastest external disk drive, the Little Big Disk Thunderbolt 2. Today you can buy it and this super fast drive is now shipping. It's small, it's portable and it's incredibly fast.

There are many tips for OS X on the Apple Mac that involve opening a Terminal window and typing an obscure command starting ‘defaults write blah blah…’ Have you ever wondered what it all means? This article demonstrates how to use the defaults command by revealing hidden files that are stored on your iMac’s or MacBook’s disk drive.

TextEdit is a basic, yet useful word processor and text editor that has been bundled with OS X on the Apple Mac for many years, but do you use it for anything or is it too basic for your needs? It can sometimes be frustrating to use, such as when you try to edit an HTML file, which after all is just plain text, to make some quick changes to your website. TextEdit modifies the code and can seriously mess up any HTML file edited with it, but there is a quick and easy solution to the problem.

Do you know which applications use the most processing power in your Mac? Which apps does your iMac or Macbook spend the most time processing? It might be useful to find out and if your computer is running more slowly than you think it should be, it might enable you to identify the problem.