Macify

Simple Mac Troubleshooting

mcone — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 06:20:28 +0000

Stephen Korecky
Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Macs have a reputation for being user-friendly and easy-to-use personal computers. And, generally speaking, they live up to that reputation. Most Macs perform flawlessly for years. However, every Mac occasionally misbehaves. You might know what we're talking about. Sometimes programs on your Mac won't launch, wireless hotspots won't appear in the menu bar, or applications keep crashing. Things just act wacky.

Macs have come a long way since they were capable of displaying the infamous "Sad Mac" image, but things can still go wrong on your new Mac.

Before you run your Mac down to the local Apple Store, read this guide. We'll show you basic troubleshooting tips that you can perform in a matter of minutes, from the comfort of their own home. With any luck, you won’t have to call Apple!

Force Quit Applications

If an application on your Mac freezes or start behaving slowly, you can force quit the application. This is a simple fix for most problems that demand immediate attention. Remember that force quitting an application will cause unsaved changes to be lost. For example, if you force quit your word processor, the unsaved changes to your document may disappear forever.

To force quit an application, select Force Quit from the Apple menu. You can also access this feature by pressing Command + Option + Esc.

You can also force quit the Finder itself, which is a little like restarting. Of course, if the Finder crashes, you might not be able to access the Force Quit window at all. In that case, you'll need to restart your Mac.

Kill Processes

If force quitting applications doesn't work, or if you suspect the problem is with a process instead of an application, you can try killing processes. This isn't for the faint of heart! To kill processes, you need to run your Mac's Activity Monitor application. You can find it here:

Macintosh HD > Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor

In this case, our Mac's Dock isn't responding. So we search for Dock, and we find the "Dock" process in the list. We select it and click the Quit Process button. A dialog box appears, and we select Force Quit. After that, our Dock automatically relaunches.

Repair Disk Permissions

If your Mac's files and folders start acting wonky, you might need to repair disk permissions. Disk permissions are important access rules that tell your Mac which files and folder you're allowed to access. Sometimes your permissions can become corrupted, and when that happens your Mac becomes confused. Repairing disk permissions fixes problems by restoring permissions to their correct state.

To repair disk permissions, you'll need to run your Mac's Disk Utility application. You can find it here:

Macintosh HD > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility

Once Disk Utility is open, click on your hard drive and then click Repair Disk Permissions. Don't bother with Verify Disk Permissions -- repairing permissions will not harm your computer, and skipping to that step will save you the time it would take to verify the permissions.

Repair Your Disk

If you're experiencing major problems with your Mac, you may want to select the Verify Disk option in the Disk Utility application. If you verify your disk and it returns errors, you will have to fix them. There are two ways to do this:

Safe and Easy: Find your Mac’s install disc, or Retail disc, and insert it into the computer. Restart while holding down "C" Until you see the Apple logo. Select the language you want to use when prompted. Don't worry: you won’t be installing anything or hurting your system in any way. From the Utilities menu, select Disk Utility. From there, it will allow you to “Repair Disk.” Hopefully, this will solve your problems.
Advanced: Restart your computer while holding down Command + S to boot into Single User Mode. Hold the keys down until your screen goes black with the terminal-looking UNIX shell command prompt. After it’s done loading, type in fsck -f and hit the Return key. This will check and repair your hard drive without the use of a CD. After it says your disk has been repaired, type reboot and your computer will reboot into Mac OS X.

Try Restarting

Most minors problems can be solved by simply restarting your computer. It sounds easy, and it is, but you'd be surprised at how many people fail to perform this basic troubleshooting step. Restarting gives you a fresh start and clean Mac to work with. It's the easiest way and fastest way to fix most problems.

As a side note, if you regularly put your Mac to sleep instead of shutting it down, you may find your Mac becoming slow or even non-responsive after several sleep-wake cycles. TidBITS has documented how sleep mode creates files that take up valuable space on your hard drive and in your RAM. It's important to restart your Mac every couple of days to clear out your RAM and delete the temporary files on your hard drive.

Find the Answer on the Internet

Finally there’s the web, and of course there's Google. However, that will only get you so far. The best place to look for specific issues with your Mac is Apple's own discussion website. You can search for your problem, which 90% of the time someone else has had. Apple employees, IT professionals, and normal Mac users like yourself use these forms everyday. If your don’t see your problem, post it! Someone is bound to answer your question, not to mention the fact that you’ll be helping others in the future that may have the same problem.

Meet Your Macinstructor

Stephen Korecky has been using Macs for as long as he can remember, and he currently supports Macs at a photography studio. He has extensive knowledge of the Mac OS X operating system and is always trying to learn something new and exciting. Stephen has been designing and building web sites for many years and is currently working towards a degree in graphic design. Contact him at stephen@macinstruct.com

10 Things to Love About Mac OS X Leopard

mcone — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 22:43:04 +0000

Arbi Karamians
Tuesday, December 18, 2007

It's been a couple months since Apple released its new operating system Mac OS X Leopard, and that's more than enough time to give it a nice once over. (See our introduction to Leopard and some of our favorite Leopard features.) The first thing you'll notice is the new look. Not just the new dock or the new login screen, but also the folders and the crisper, sleeker look of icons and folders. We think it's safe to say Apple junkies were expecting something pretty, because if there's one thing Apple is known for, it's their impressive design. Once you can get past the pretty, shiny things, you start to notice some amazing functionality.

We want to outline some of the more significant upgrades and 10 things you'll love about Leopard. The following items will be in no particular order simply because people use their computers for different reasons and our number 1 might be your number 10. That said, let's look at some of the fun new features.

1. The Dock

We mentioned the dock a bit earlier simply because it's worth mentioning. You'll immediately notice that the dock is laid out differently in the sense that it's now more "3D" as the icons are laid out on plane rather than a backdrop. Oh, and did we mention that it’s reflective?

Once you're done minimizing and maximizing windows to see the cool effects, you'll notice that the dock has some new functions. After your initial startup you'll have new icons for Spaces, Time Machine, Systems Preferences, as well as a Downloads folder icon. We'll cover most of these later on, but let's look at the Downloads folder next.

2. Downloads Folder

This feature kind of broadsides you, because you don't need it until you actually download something. Forget the days where your desktop would be cluttered with PDFs, PSDs, and DMGs. Any download you start will automatically go straight into your download folder, so no more forgetting whether you chose Desktop, Pictures, or some other location to save your file.

You'll know exactly where your download went, and you'll know exactly where to go to get it. Doesn’t sound like an entirely innovative idea, we know, but trust us: After a few downloads you’ll start to love it. Now, let's say you've been downloading pictures of your favorite actor or actress for your side project as an "entertainment blogger" and you want to find a specific picture from the downloads folder. Bring on Stacks!

3. Stacks

Stacks are folders you can place in your dock for items you need to quickly access. Downloads is a Stack that comes pre-installed with your new Leopard Dock. The name "Stacks" doesn’t make sense until you see how it works. Click on the Downloads folder and you get a stack of the pictures, folders, and anything else you've downloaded.

The items in that stack will fan out and allow you to see what's in that specific folder. You can change the preferences to have your items displayed in a grid if you don’t like the fan feature. Whether you use fan or grid is irrelevant. The main point is that you have all of your folder items right there in front of you, but more importantly out of your way. See, isn't it nice to have a nice clean desktop? We think so too, and so do second and third grade teachers all over world.

4. Spaces

Spaces is useful for the serious multi-taskers out there. Let's say you're a super hero and you’re designing new outfits while you’re checking on stats in your fantasy football league. (What? Super heroes don’t like fantasy sports?) Spaces can accommodate! You can arrange different Spaces for different things and even assign a specific Space to specific programs.

You can also add more columns and rows and have up to 16 different Spaces! With 16 Spaces you can certainly get all your super hero work done. Seriously, though: If you’re wearing lycra spandex you've got other things to worry about.

5. Time Machine

It's happened to all of us – you're using your computer and you accidentally delete something. Something important: Documents from your childhood, your project due in 5 hours, or maybe even your pictures of Jessica Simpson for your entertainment blog. You're in trouble, right? Nope, because you had the good sense to set up Time Machine, which backs up all of your files automatically to a storage device.

Simply click on the Time Machine icon and it allows you to scroll back and forth through your Mac's history and choose a time period that would restore your Mac and restore the data you just lost. Time and time again you've been told backing up your files is important, necessary, and a lifesaver. It's all true. And now it's also easy - so easy that after you set it up you won't even know you're doing it.

6. Boot Camp

Intel-Mac users were very excited to hear that Apple would make Boot Camp available to the public -- something that allowed all Intel-based Macs to use Windows. Now Boot Camp is built into Leopard and is no longer a secondary install. If you've never used Boot Camp, the setup assistant will guide you through your setup process. Simply grab a copy of Windows and run the setup process.

So now when you need to use a Windows program, for whatever the reason, Boot Camp makes it increasingly simple to do so. As the Apple website says, "Leopard is the world’s most advanced operating system. So advanced, it even lets you run Windows…"

7. Parental Controls

Have some little Mac users in your home? Want to make sure they're safely using the family computer? You can manage your child's usage in a number of ways while monitoring their use. You can limit the applications they use, content they view on the web, limit mail and iChat usage, place time limits on when and how long they use the computer, and view logs of websites visited, applications used, and what they did on iChat. It's all available in your Mac's System Preferences.

In a world of uncertainty, it's good to know you can be certain your child is safe when they're on the computer.

8. Finder

Another improvement to an already useful feature can be found in Finder. You will immediately notice the new sidebar and how items are grouped. The most useful groups are the Today, Yesterday, Past Week, All Movies, All Images and All Documents groups. Yup, they're all exactly what they say they are.

The Today folder will show you all the files you've accessed that day, and the Yesterday folder will show you all the files you accessed yesterday. The All Movies folder will show every movie you have on your Mac, and The All Images folder will show you all the images on your Mac.

9. Cover Flow

Cover Flow looks as good as it is useful. Never before have you been able to visually arrange your files and folders. It's always been grids or lists of files and folders and frankly, it's just boring.

Let's say you're looking for a specific picture of Tony Danza for your blog: You shouldn't have to click on each picture one by one to view them all. In cover flow just hit the arrows right or left or drag the bar and you scroll through pictures with ease. In my opinion, Tony Danza has never looked better.

10. Roll Your Own

We're leaving the last item up for grabs. The reason? Apple released Leopard with 300 new features and to choose just 10 to discuss is somewhat silly. So number 10 is up to you. We've simply outlined 9 features which are the most notable upgrades in the new version of OS X - so go ahead and take off that Super Hero cape and put down the People Magazine you’re using for blog research and take a look around your Mac and find whichever feature you’d consider to be number 10!

Meet Your Macinstructor

Arbi Karamians is an enthusiastic and motivated 20-something who spends his time between work, play, and family. He was an unwitting PC user for nearly 15 years of his computing life who later was enlightened through his quest for higher efficiency and increased productivity. He bought his first Mac nearly 2 years ago and he's never looked back. The less time he spends looking for printer drivers the more he gets done! Email him at arbi@macinstruct.com.

7 Little Leopard Niceties

mcone — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 07:27:11 +0000

Matthew Cone
Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Much has been made of Mac OS X Leopard and its major new features. In fact, if you know anything at all about Apple's new operating system, you can probably name most of the big changes. Time Machine, Spaces, Stacks, and Cover Flow in the Finder are but a few of the major features. (We even covered these in our Mac OS X Leopard introduction article.) But what about everything else? With over 300 new features, it's hard to know where to start exploring your Mac's new operating system.

In this article, we'd like to share ten of our favorite little Leopard features. You probably haven't even heard of these relatively minor changes yet, but if you're like us, you'll quickly start wondering how you ever lived without them.

1. Finder Path Bar

Apple has finally resolved one of our biggest gripes about the Finder: you couldn't see the folder path in Finder windows unless you were in the column view. That was a real drag, especially since other operating systems made the task so simple. On Unix-like systems you can simple type pwd (which stands for present working directory) and you'll see where you are in the file structure. And of course Windows has always had the address bar.

With the advent of Leopard, all you have to do is select Show Path Bar from the View menu.

A folder path will appear at the bottom of every Finder window. It's very handy to have around, especially when you have lots and lots of nested folders!

2. A Faster Quick Look

Admittedly, this is a major addition to Mac OS X. As most of you probably know, all you have to do is click the Quick Look button (it looks like an eye) in any Finder window and you'll see a preview of the file you've selected. Of course, it would be rather cumbersome to click on the Quick Look button every time you wanted to preview something.

Desktop artwork by David Lanham.

Fortunately, there's an easier way to preview the stuff in Finder windows. Just select an item and then press the Space bar. The preview of the item will appear. To quickly preview all of the items in a folder, press the up and down arrow keys.

3. New Front Row

One pleasant surprise after installing Leopard is seeing the new version of Front Row. This is the same version that ships with Apple TV! Just fire the application up with your Apple Remote and start watching free streaming content from iTunes, like movie previews.

Yes, we know it's cheesy, but we love to just sit and watch things (like the most popular movies on iTunes) scroll by in Front Row. It's so cool!

4. Tabbed iChat Conversations

Leopard ships with a much improved version of iChat that includes lots of new bells and whistles. One of our favorite new iChat features is the ability to consolidate all of our conversations into one window. Tabbed iChat conversations reduce clutter and help you keep on top of multiple instant messaging conversations.

Since this feature isn't turned on when you install Leopard, you'll have to turn
it on yourself. To do that, launch iChat and select Preferences from the iChat menu. Select the Messages tab and make sure Collect chats into a single window is checked.

After you do that, your chats should be in one window, as shown below.

5. iChat Smilies

Everybody loves smilies -- especially people who use iChat. There are new icons for everyone in the iChat smilies window! Attention parents: be sure to let your teenagers know.

You can access these smilies from the text entry box. Or you can insert them by selecting the Insert Smiley option from the Edit menu.

6. Improved Terminal Preferences

Apple really threw gear-heads a bone with the improved Terminal application. For years, Unix and Linux geeks bemoaned Mac OS X's simplistic and crude application that was Terminal. Not any more. Now it actually... well, works! Just launch the Terminal application, select Preferences from the Terminal menu, and see for yourself.

If you select the Settings tab, you'll be able to change Terminal's appearance in a jiffy. We're kind of partial to the Homebrew setting that comes with Terminal. It's transparent, for one thing, and it appeals to the Matrix movie nerd inside of us. But, hey -- emulate until you find a setting you dig.

7. Crazy Cool Safari Tabs

First, we should say that Safari 3 is much, much improved over Safari 2. It's fast and stable, elegant and minimalist. But the best improvement has to be the new tabs. Let's face it: Safari's new tabs have all of the features Apple fanboys dreamed about. You can now rearrange tabs, for one thing. Slide 'em around and move 'em all over the place -- Safari now lets you do it. Another nice feature is asking you whether or not you want to close a window full of tabs. And finally, Safari shows you a preview of the tab when you drag it away from the window to create a new window. Awesome!

Meet Your Macinstructor

Matthew Cone is a technical writer living and working in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In his free time, he does the desert rat thing and hikes and road bikes around the Southwest. The rest of the time, he studies straw-bale houses, reads Anarchist philosophy, and pretends to not be working. You can email him at: matt@macinstruct.com

Mac Your Xbox 360

mcone — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 04:54:45 +0000

Stephen Korecky
Thursday, November 1, 2007

If you're a Mac user who owns an Xbox 360, you're probably hankering to get your computer and game station talking to one another. After all, both of these powerful machines are capable of playing games, music, and video content. Why not share content between your Mac and Xbox 360? If you're looking for solutions, we have some answers for you. These tips aren't perfect -- there's still a lot that can be done in the way of developing applications that can facilitate communication between the two devices. (Are you listening software developers?) Nonetheless, these ideas should point you in the right direction.

Getting Content to your Xbox 360

The first thing you'll probably want to do is get your music on your Xbox 360. Of course, the simplest way to do this is to pop your CDs into your Xbox and rip them to the Xbox 360 hard drive. However, since you only have 20GBs of space, we'd rather save that for things like new maps and saving games.

The second way you can get music onto your Xbox is to connect your iPod. Believe it or not, you can connect it to the 360 using the USB cable that came with your iPod. Go figure, huh? It even shows your iPod’s name in the media section, and you can play all your tunes.

The only other option -- and probably the best option at that -- is to buy a little application called Connect360 (free to try, and then $20). Just install the application and it will appear in your Mac's System Preferences.

Just open your System Preferences, select Connect360, and then click the Start button. You'll be ready to connect! All you have to do is go to the Media Section of your Xbox 360, select Shared Computers, and then look for your computer. It will use your network name, which can be changed under the Xbox's Sharing Preferences.

Now you can use your Xbox 360 to view your photos, play your music, and watch your movies -- all without transferring them to your Xbox! The content will stream wirelessly from your Mac to your Xbox.

Get the Xbox GamerCard Widget

If you like to play games online, then you'll like this widget. Xbox GamerCard is a free Dashboard widget that shows your Xbox game card so you can quickly see how you're doing.

Use Your XBox 360 Controller With Your Mac

How many times have you wished there was a decent controller for the Mac? Well, now you can use your Xbox 360 controller. If you have a USB version, you can just plug it right in and download the Xbox HID Driver for the Mac. It's freely available at http://xhd.sourceforge.net.

If you have the wireless controller, then you can get the Wireless Receiver from Microsoft ($20.00) at http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/x/xbox360wirelessgamingreceiver.

Meet Your Macinstructor

Speed Up Your Sluggish Mac

mcone — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 04:57:01 +0000

Stephen Korecky
Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Remember when you first bought your shiny new Mac a couple years ago? It was snappy, speedy, and responsive -- so responsive that at times it actually seemed to know what you were thinking. These days, however, it seems to be anything but speedy. Indeed, your aging Mac is now the epitome of slow. And more and more you're finding that your Mac is unbearably sluggish and difficult to use.

But wait! Don't lose hope and give up on your "beater pile" just yet. There are plenty of ways to breathe new life into your aging Mac! That is, if you're not fishing for an excuse to score a new MacBook Pro. We'll show you how to do it.

Add More Memory to Your Mac

The first thing you can do is get yourself some RAM (Random Access Memory). Adding new RAM to your Mac allows it to perform more random tasks faster, so stuff like starting up or shutting down will take less time. And, since every application uses RAM in one way or another, having enough of it will help keep applications and your operating system running smoothly. I recommend 2GBs for more advance users who like using iPhoto, Aperture, iDVD, and iMovie. For your average user -- who only needs stuff like email, Internet, Microsoft Word and Excel -- 1GB of RAM will do the trick.

RAM comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. Make sure you get the right RAM for your Mac! The best place to go to get a good deal and the right piece of RAM is from http://www.ramseeker.com. They will automatically match prices with various competitors.

Keep in mind that RAM can only do so much. It helps, but it's not a magic bullet solution to all of your Mac's slowness problems. You can’t expect a 333MHz iMac G3 With 1GB of RAM to be as fast as a G4 tower with 256MB RAM. But the extra RAM does help. Of course, this also doesn’t mean that you should fill your Mac Pro with 16GB of RAM. Something like that could be used for heavy video editing and renderings, but it's just not useful for the average user.

Available Hard Drive Space

Another thing you need to think about is your Mac's available hard drive space. Many applications and even the Mac OS X operating system need to write temporary files to the hard drive. Your hard drive also needs to be able to sort out files and be able to put fragments back together. It’s always good to have about 10GB of free space available on your machine. Older machines might not have that option, but 10GBs is a good rule of thumb for hard drives 80GBs or larger.

Drop Some Money: Get TechTool Pro

It’s completely optional, of course, but we think a good idea to invest in a professional program like TechTool Pro (http://www.micromat.com, $98.00). The application lets you perform regular and emergency maintenance tasks on your hard drive, among other things. As you can see from the image above, our hard drive is in excellent condition. You want to make sure you have no holes in the blue area. TechTool Pro also offers many other tests to make sure your Mac is in tip-top shape.

Going the Free Route: Get OnyX

OnyX (http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs2/english/onyx_tiger.html) is a great free utility that allows you to clean up your Mac. Running OnyX's "Automation" scripts will execute most of the maintenance and cleaning scripts necessary to clean up your Mac. However, after you restart, it will take a little while for your Mac to get back up to speed. Usually your Mac will feel great after your second restart.

One More Thing...

Last, but not least, ORGANIZE! Keep your music in your Music folder. Same with pictures and movies -- keep them in their respective folders. Keeping your files in the right place will make things easier for your applications -- they'll know where to go to find what they want. You'll also know where to look when you need something. We work better when things aren't on our Desktops to distract us. The only things we ever have on our Desktops are our hard drive icons and the files we're currently working on. As soon as we're done with files they go in the Sites folder or Documents folder, etc.

Meet Your Macinstructor

Bringing the Best of Windows to Mac OS X

mcone — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 13:56:47 +0000

Arbi Karamians
Wednesday, September 19, 2007

I was a Windows user for nearly nine years of my life. Throughout that period of time, I had countless issues with my Windows PC and Windows as an operating system. In fact, there are specific issues that were so inconceivable, I actually remember the countless hours I spent resolving them. These issues eventually led me to enlightenment, i.e., a MacBook Pro. However, having been a Windows user for such a long period of time, I’m left missing specific Windows features. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s very much the truth – our counterparts do have some features worth mentioning.

Two specific features top my chart of “Things I Miss.” Actually, it’s safe to say my “Things I Miss” chart is limited to two features: Defrag and Add or Remove Programs. For the sake of saving time and maintaining my low blood pressure, I’ll refrain from jotting down a “Things I Don’t Miss” chart.

These two tools (Defrag and Add or Remove Programs) are, at their core, tools to allow the reorganization of data. One of the tools, Defrag, is a systematic protocol developed to automatically reorganize and rearrange fragmented program files. The second allows for a manual addition or removal of programs which are no longer needed, or unnecessary or problematic. Personally, I run a tight ship, so these programs came in handy quite often during my naïve and ignorant Windows PC days.

The first thing I sought out when making the switch from Windows to Mac was software that would enable me to keep my Mac free of the riff raff Windows users face constantly. Through a little bit of research on the Internet I found myself at two websites that would forever change my Mac experience: www.santasw.com and www.appzapper.com.

Main Menu

Santa Software have developed a bit of software that works wonders on Macs. Main Menu, their flagship title, will actually perform all of your batch file tasks depending on your personal preferences. Main Menu has several options, and although it does not perform the specific tasks of its counterpart, defrag, it does reorganize data to ensure a more efficient performance.

First and foremost, “Maintenance Scripts” allow you to specify dates and times you’d wish your batch tasks to be executed, which is a handy feature if you’ve got a complicated schedule.

[Editor's Note: For more information about your Mac's maintenance scripts, see this Macinstruct article.]

Other Main Menu features include:

Disk Utility repairs OS X and OS 9 disk permissions.
Rebuild rebuilds your Spotlight index, updates your locate database, updates your whatis database, and rebuilds launch services. This will allow for faster search results in Spotlight. And will also update or redo your prebindings which will increase the speed at which your programs open.
Cleaning cleans user cache, cleans system cache, empties browser cache, cleans browser history, and cleans font caches. Cleaning clears your system of unnecessary or unimportant data that will slow down your systems performance. Think of it this way: Cleaning gets rid of the information that temporarily served a purpose but can now be discarded.
Finder allows you to batch the tasks of emptying your trash, restarting finder and restarting your dock. These are all things you can do manually, but the point of Main Menu is that you can batch these tasks and in 10 -15 minutes you can have them all completed and even set to have your Mac restart or shutdown upon completion.
Other Tasks runs a list of tasks such as clearing archived logs, removing temporary files, clean dashboard cache and clear dashboard processes.

Main Menu creates a queue of tasks and executes them to make a faster and more efficient Mac. I think we can all agree that that’s something we’ve come to expect from our Macs. Main Menu will keep your Mac in tip-top shape!

AppZapper

AppZapper is a program developed by Austin Sarner and Brian Ball that allows you to easily uninstall programs and applications from your Mac. In fact, they claim that their program is “the uninstaller Apple forgot.” They emphasize its ease of use, and after using it for a couple weeks now, I can reiterate that sentiment.

Just as easily as you drag and drop an application into your Application folder to install it, you can drag and drop that application into AppZapper and it will uninstall all of its related components. Anyone who has spent the time scouring through Read Me files and Spotlight trying to find all the components you’ll need to delete to “uninstall” an application will immediately appreciate AppZapper. The $12.95 you’ll have to pay for the license will pay for itself the first time you save yourself 45 minutes trying to uninstall a program you just wanted to test out.

[Editor's Note: AppDelete provides the same functionality as AppZapper and is free of charge.]

Put these two programs to work and you’ll have your Mac running smoother in minutes. I optimize my MacBook Pro weekly using these two programs and my Mac is as good as new after a year of use. Try them out. Heck, if you don’t like them, you have 5 free zaps on AppZapper to get rid of them!

Meet Your Macinstructor

Safeguard Your Files with Online Backups

mcone — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 07:01:28 +0000

Mike Sweeney
Tuesday, September 4, 2007

We all know we should back up our files, but who actually does? Well, we do most of the time, and right now we're using two services to back up our email and critical work files - some PDFs, a book project and a lot of Photoshop PSD files. We have about 2.5 gig worth of "stuff" that needs to be backed up.

At the moment, we're using "Backup" from Apple since we have a .Mac membership which gives us (and you, if you join) access to the Backup application. Backup uses .Mac and your iDrive to backup, compress, upload and store the compressed backups. You can run these on demand or whenever you like - you can even set it to start late at night and run while you sleep.

Your .Mac membership will gives you 10GB of storage or, if you buy a family pack, 20GB of space online for websites, email and file storage. This makes it perfect for those smaller, but absolutely critical files that must be backed up.

When you log into .Mac, you'll want to click on the "Backup" button which has the umbrella on it.

This will take you the solutions page of Backup. You can read about it, download the application, and start believing that Backup is the greatest thing since sliced bread. (Or not.) Now, it is very handy and it's good at what it can do, but we would never, ever think about backing up our entire system with it. We would be more inclined to use something like Jungledisk with Amazon's S3 storage services (which deserves another article). But Backup does work well. It's flexible, it has one step backups for iLife projects (important stuff) and more.

So now that you have downloaded it, what now? Install it and run it so you can configure the scheduler, the files etc. When you start Backup, you will see this window:

Yours will look slightly different since we have a couple of custom jobs already configured. But what you want to open is one of the templates, so we will click on the gear, and then click on NEW.

These are our basic template choices, plus the custom choice. You can see that Apple makes it very painless to get important files into a backup scheme. But our warning with iTunes is that 30GB of music/videos will take a LONG time to back up, plus you will probably run out of room on the iDrive. So you really need a different method of safeguarding iTunes. But Backup shines at backing up stuff like pictures, text files etc.

Here is what the personal data template will grab for you. It also gives you the current size of each item, which is very nice so you are not left in the cold on the very last step with too much data and not enough room.

You can see that you have a schedule OR you can click on the "Back Up Now" button for a "run it now" backup. To make the schedule, just click on the plus sign and you will see this window.

Adjust the schedule and then click OK. We normally start a manual backup, just to make sure the base backup completes successfully and everything after that is an incremental backup.

That's all it takes to safeguard your files - just a .Mac membership and a free application from Apple. Not a bad deal at all for the price!

Introducing AppleTV - An Honest Look

mcone — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 06:55:16 +0000

Wayne Linder
Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Now that most of the initial furor has died down, I think it’s time to write an article about the AppleTV. Why an article now – on a device released months ago and overanalyzed by both press and users alike? I believe that I and others who have had the AppleTV for a while now have enough experience with it to properly review it.

Before I go into the review, let me tell you what led me to purchase the AppleTV. For the past few years, I have recorded TV onto my Mac with a Formac Studio DV – a great little device for both capturing video as a pure DV stream and playing/recording TV. Since I, like many others, have a busy schedule, I mostly used it for watching recorded TV on my Mac – using it in place of a Tivo-like device. Having an Apple 20-inch Studio display, this worked out great until my wife asked me one night, “When are we going to be able to watch TV on the TV again?” This question really started the wheels turning.

Apple Does TV (Finally)

I knew that Elgato had some great devices for playing your multimedia content on a TV, but I had also heard through the rumor mill that Apple was working on their own device. On September 12th, 2006, Apple announced the AppleTV. Being the giddy Apple fanboy with more dollars then sense (or so I have been accused), I ordered one immediately when the online Apple Store opened after the keynote. It was only $299.00 – a small price to pay for such Apple-y goodness. Or so I thought.

The release date was delayed a bit, but that was OK. That gave me time to do a bit more research into the requirements of the device. The first thing I found out is that it would not work with my existing standard definition TV. This was a problem, but not an insurmountable one. All I had to do was convince my wife that we needed a new TV. “But we just bought a new TV!” she cried. “Yes, ten years ago” I replied. The battle raged, but I finally won her over. All it took was the promise that she could buy a new entertainment center for the new TV – a fair trade, I suppose. Of course, since it was a high definition TV, it would also require a high definition antenna, and all of the cabling, signal amplifiers etc. that it required. Sigh. So, my original pittance of a $299.00 investment turned into over $5,000.00 – all so we could watch TV on the TV again. Isn’t life in today’s high-technology world fun?

Using AppleTV in the Wild

Now that I have had the AppleTV in my house for a few months, I feel that I know its good and bad points pretty well. My kids and I have definitely put it through its paces and it has performed flawlessly. In fact, one of the most negative things I can say about the whole experience has nothing to do with the AppleTV, but about my couch. I have been spending so much more time watching TV and movies lately that I’ve realized my couch really isn’t that comfortable.

First, let’s cover the good points. Number one would have to be the interface. Apple has done their usual superb job on the AppleTV’s main and sub-menus. When the AppleTV was announced, many wondered how a device like this could function with a remote that only had six buttons. As anyone who has had an iPod could tell you, it works and it works well. The main menu is divided into five sections – Movies, TV, Music, Podcasts, Photos, Settings and Sources, as seen in the picture below:

Each main section is divided into sub-sections. For instance, under the Movies section are movie suggestions from iTunes, movie trailers, and movies you’ve purchased through iTunes, as seen in the picture below:

Each purchased movie has a picture of the box art and a description of the movie, cast, etc. but no special features, directors cuts, subtitles and the like. Purchased movies are of decent quality – though some videophiles may object. Yes, there is artifacting in some of the fast-paced scenes, but speaking as Joe Consumer, it looks fine to me on a 50” plasma HDTV. The fact that I can buy children’s movies through iTunes and not have them scratched beyond playability is very much in the plus column.

Movies are great, but it’s TV where AppleTV really shines, in my opinion. Since I took the leap into the HDTV world, I knew it was time to put my Formac Studio out to pasture. I purchased an Elgato EyeTV Hybrid – a USB HD/Analog TV tuner. Plugged into my main Mac, it turns the AppleTV into a full-fledged PVR. Using Elgato’s EyeTV software, I can schedule shows to be recorded in their full HD glory, automatically converted into AppleTV’s native H.264 format, transferred to iTunes and then synced to my AppleTV. Sweet! iTunes can be set up to sync all TV shows or the last few unwatched episodes of a show to save hard drive space.

The AppleTV also allows you to play your iPhoto slideshows in full HD glory. Although it lacks a browser or other method of quickly going through your photos (admittedly not its intended purpose), the slideshows it does – with custom music through your iTunes library – are great. I’ve been told that seeing the beautiful pictures on a great screen with professional transitions makes seeing our vacation pictures almost bearable to the neighbors!

Being a gadget-lover, when I first heard about the Squeezebox – a professional way of getting your iTunes music into your stereo – I jumped at it. Since I bought the AppleTV however, I have unplugged it. The AppleTV interacts perfectly with iTunes playlists. True, with the Squeezebox’s Plasma display, I didn’t need to turn my TV on to listen to my music, but the AppleTV makes listening to music more of a visual experience. As you scroll through albums, artists and tracks, you get an iTunes-like coverflow interface. Apple has both RCA and optical output connectors, so you can hook it up to your TV or a higher-end receiver for better playback fidelity.

These are some of the good points. What about the bad? I would say that for most, the largest stroke against the AppleTV would be the price. For me, the AppleTV made sense, along with the Elgato Hybrid, for watching TV on my schedule. For those with cable and a Tivo-like DVR device, this may be a different story. I find the convenience of having all of my media available to me in one location and with one interface quite worth it. Some may also question the small hard drive as a choice for those with larger libraries. Apple does offer four times the storage (160 GB) for $100.00 more.

Even though Apple releases great products, some people are just never satisfied. Before the ink was dry on many people’s receipts, they had cracked open the cases of their shiny new AppleTV’s and rooted around inside, seeing where the box could be tweaked. One of the first things people did was to swap the internal hard drive for something a bit roomier. Next, people realized that being tied to iTunes for content was a bit limiting in their eyes. Many hacks sprung up to allow the playing of video files that the AppleTV didn’t have the capability to play with the default firmware. People also utilized the “diagnostic” USB port for keyboards, mice and even external storage. Some people have even modified the device to do things I’m sure that Apple didn’t even think of.

In my time with the AppleTV, I have found it to be a device worthy of my time, effort and expense. It fits my needs perfectly, and I believe it has the flexibility to fit many people’s needs as well. As more and more of our time is spent in the digital realm, I believe Steve Jobs’ plan of Apple being the hub of this digital life is becoming more of a reality every day.

Meet Your Macinstructor

A computer user since the early days, and a Mac user since the first Mac 128K, Wayne Linder currently works for a large storage and peripheral company after having several careers in the audio, advertising and IT fields. He helps run Utah's largest Macintosh User Group - UMUG - and is active on many computer help forums. He is also a member of the Air Force Reserves and enjoys working on his computer until the wee hours of the morning, even though his wife claims he should put down the bloody mouse and exercise a little. (In his defense, he just doesn't understand the concept of voluntary sweating. What's up with that?!) Email him at wayne@macinstruct.com

Change Your Default Web Browser and Email Client

mcone — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 07:14:03 +0000

Matthew Cone
Tuesday, August 7, 2007

You can come across links to web pages and email addresses in everything from Word files to PDFs these days. When you click the links, your Mac opens the website or email message in your default web browser and email client, which by default is set to Safari and Apple's Mail. But what if you use Firefox or another web browser? What happens if you use another email client to send and receive email messages? In that case, you'll want to change your Mac's default web browser and email client.

Here's how to do it:

Open Safari. You can probably find it on your Dock, but if you don't see it there you can find it in your Applications folder.
From the Safari menu, select Preferences. Select the General tab.
From the Default Web Browser menu, select the web browser you'd like to set as the default.
Close Safari's Preferences, and quit Safari.
Open Mail. You can probably find it on your Dock, but if you don't see it there you can find it in your Applications folder.
From the Mail menu, select Preferences. Select the General tab.
From the Default Email Reader menu, select the web browser you'd like to set as the default.
Close Mail's Preferences, and quit Mail.

That's it! You've changed your Mac's default web browser and email client.

Meet Your Macinstructor

12 Step Program for Recovering Windows Users

mcone — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 06:15:05 +0000

Arbi Karamians
Tuesday, July 31, 2007

There was once a time in my life when I’d wake up in the morning with bloodshot eyes, a headache and a sore back. This was not, unfortunately, due to my endless partying with co-eds, rather it was the result of my endless battle with my Windows PC. Whether it was trying to get my printer to work, or trying to track down a driver, or even contemplating whether I should throw my PC out the window because I’d received the “blue screen of death” - the problems just never seemed to stop! Those days, however, are a distant memory, because I now own a shiny MacBook Pro.

Don't let Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer have the last laugh. Stick it to the man!

My transition from Windows to Mac OS X was easy since I had a pal who had been a Mac-user his entire life. He fed me tips and tidbits that really helped me throughout the early stages of my “macification.” Unfortunately, some of you might not be as lucky as I was. We've put together a 12-step PC to Mac resource for recovering Windows users. We’ll incorporate my experience with Apple’s own Switch 101 to get you through your life changing transition. We’ve also attached a cheat sheet Apple made available so new users can write down and have access to all their important Apple information.

So here we go!

1. I Need My Personal Files, But They’re On My PC

Don’t worry – it’s all pretty straightforward. If you’ve recently purchased a Mac, you can ask your local Apple Store Genius Bar to transfer all your data from your PC to Mac for free. Yes, you heard correctly - they’ll do it for free. That helpful service comes as part of your standard Apple Care service. Don't live near an Apple Store? Don’t worry! There are several ways you can transfer the years of data you’ve managed to stuff into your PC:

CD-R/DVD-R: You can burn the data to a CD-R/DVD-R. Each CD-R can easily accommodate a 750 MB transfer and a DVD-R 4.7 GB transfer. We used this process, because we only needed to transfer 3 GB of personal information.
Portable Hard-Drive: Transferring your files to an external hard-drive and on to your Mac is also a great option. If you don’t have an external hard-drive, we suggest purchasing one – backing up is essential when using either a PC or Mac. You can easily find 30GB to 40GB external hard-drives for around $50, which is a pretty reasonable for a sound investment.
Direct Ethernet or Wireless Connection: A simple Ethernet crossover cable can do the trick. You connect the two computers together using the Ethernet crossover and start transferring files. Or, you can connect your computers together wirelessly. Either option works!

For more ways to transfer data, visit this Apple Support page on this issue.

2. Where's My Computer? I Need to Access My C: Drive!

Macs don’t have a “My Computer,” and they don’t have a “C: drive." They do, however, have your local hard drive readily accessible on your desktop.

This hard drive works much the same way as your PC’s “My Computer." In our opinion, the Mac’s hard drive is quite a bit more organized. As you can see, it has all your important folders in a column on the left-side of the window. That way, whether you’re searching for a Word document, an MP3 file, or a photo from your winter trip to Bali with the wife and kids, they’re all within reach.

3. I Want to Install an Application, But I Don't Know How

The process of installing an application in Mac OS X is pretty straightforward. Unless otherwise prompted by the installer itself, simply drag the application from its source folder to the applications folder under your local hard drive.

Once you do this, a status window will appear to show you the percentage and time left until the transfer (installation) is complete. Some installers are more conventional in the sense that they install via a step-by-step process, much like they would on a PC.

4. I Need to Run an Application, But I Can't Find the Start Menu

To make it simple to track down frequently used programs, Apple created the Dock. The Dock is stationed on the left, bottom, or right of your screen, and the placement is entirely your choice. You can also choose to have the dock automatically hide itself and only appear when you mouse over it.

The Dock is also where your trash can, minimized open windows, and programs will be placed when they're inactive. Essentially, the dock replaces certain aspects of a PC’s desktop and status bar. You can add and remove programs to the Dock by dragging them into the Dock from your applications folder and just as easily remove them from your Dock by dragging them out.

5. I Looked in Documents, Applications... and I Still Can't Find It

If you’ve looked through your different folders and are having trouble finding something, look no further than Spotlight. Simply run a quick live search for your item and search everything on your computer including documents, images, and even emails. When Spotlight finds an item which fits your search query, it will organize the search by showing you each item which fits your query and show you the folder in which it’s located.

6. A Program Froze and Ctrl-Alt-Del Doesn't Work

Applications rarely freeze on Macs, but it will happen to you at some point. When this happened on your PC, you hit Ctrl + Alt + Del and you got a list of every single process your computer was running at the time. You ran down your list of fifty different processes until you came across your ill-functioning program and quit it.

On your Mac, the process is quite similar with only one slight difference - instead of hitting Ctrl + Alt + Del, you hit ⌘ (apple/CMD) + Option (alt) + Esc. A list of running programs will appear. You don’t have to run through a list services that you’re not looking for – only your running programs appear so you can easily locate the program you’re looking to quit.

7. Does This Thing Have a Right Click?

Yes, you can right click with your Mac. In fact, if you run out and grab the newest release of Apple’s “Mighty Mouse,” you have the option in Mouse/Keyboard settings to set a secondary button (right click). If you don’t want to spend the cash on a new mouse, just use Ctrl + Click - it's the equivalent to a right click. If you’re on a laptop, simply place two fingers on the track pad and click. This is nifty because it eliminates the need to Ctrl + Click.

8. I Can't View Videos I Transfered From My PC

This is a pretty common issue. There are several solutions to this problem, but you'll only need two. Our first suggestion is the VLC VideoLan Media player. We have never come across a video VLC couldn’t play. It is known to be one of the most platform independent players on the web. Best of all, it’s completely free!

Your other option is to use Flip4Mac, a free application that allows you to watch Windows Media Player files.

9. I Need to Install My Old PC Printer and Mouse

You need not be concerned about installing your PC accessories. Stop searching for your driver CDs and searching the Internet for the company website to download software – connect the device to your Mac. Chances are it will work! There is an enormous number of devices that Macs are pre-bundled to support. In fact, they’ve added the list on their support page. Check it out!

10. I Need to Move My Outlook Email Messages to My Mac

Moving your email messages from your PC to your Mac is a simple process. Entourage is Microsoft’s Email application for Macs. Apple's Genius Bar is also a great place to resolve this issue. When taking your computer in to have them transfer your data, you can request that they transfer your Outlook messages as well. If, however, you are nowhere near an Apple Store, then follow these easy directions. The easiest way of going about this is to download Mozilla Thunderbird, and then select Import Messages from Outlook from the File menu and open the file in Thunderbird. (Apple's Mail application also has a similar option.) Since Thunderbird uses the .mbox format, you can easily transfer your files!

11. Windows Used to Update Itself. What about Mac OS X?

We'll venture to say that Mac OS X’s update feature is far more convenient and easy to use than its Windows counterpart. Simply click on the Apple menu in the upper left-hand corner of your screen, select Software Update, and OS X will automatically begin searching for updates. If your OS is up to date, you’re informed of just that. If you need updates, simply click the Install button and wait. With a broadband connection even the largest updates only take 10-15 minutes.

12. How Do I Access the Mac OS X Device Manager?

Mac OS X does not have a Device Manager like Windows. In Windows, you navigate your way to Device Manager from My Computer > Properties > Device Manager tab. In Mac OS X, if you’re searching for information regarding a certain device, you simply click on the Apple menu and select About This Mac. If you’re looking for a more detailed list of devices click the More Info button.

These twelve steps should help to alleviate some of the frustration you may encounter while switching to Mac OS X. It’s important to understand that although it is a change, it’s neither a difficult change nor a change for the worse. In no time you’ll find yourself being happier and more productive. And with the money you save on Aspirin, you can buy yourself other shiny Apple products. Welcome to the family!

Meet Your Macinstructor