1. Go into System Preferences–>Keyboard
2. Click the Keyboard Shortcuts tab
3. Select the ‘Launchpad & Dock’ category in the left colum
4. In the right pane, check ON ‘Show Launchpad’ and double-click the area near where it lists the assigned shortcut keys (by default this is blank for Launchpad). That will make the area editable.
5. Press the desired keyboard shortcut to assign it. (I assigned mine to the ‘F8′ key).
6. Close the System Preferences

So this is what I did and it worked great. I was able to access Lunchpad just fine wth one tap of my F8 key and all was going great until this morning. I had been hearing reports of people having an issue where Launchpad application list was not being updated when installing new apps. I was fairly certian that I wasn’t having this issue, but I wanted to double check so I pressed my F8 key and… “Bonk!” I got the invalid key press system sound. I thought that maybe in my testing of Lion’s new Universal Access features I may have inadvertantly enabled something that was causing a conflict. I double checked my F-key settings and did all the standard keyboard troubleshooting, but couldn’t find anything wrong. I finally realized it was only Launchpad that wouldn’t respond to the assigned keyboard shortcut. I even tried assigning a completely different one, but to no avail. “Bonk!” was the only response it cared to give me. I was still able to open the Launchpad application from the Dock and even confimed that all the applications I had recently installed were in there. I wasn’t suffering from the issue I had been hearing about, but I had determined Launchpad was definately my culprit. I thought I should at least try the fix that had been reported for the other Launchpad issue and see what would happen. Long story short, it fixed my issue too.

Doing Launchpad Repair

It seems like Apple has some more tweaking to do with respect to Launchpad. In the meantime though, it appears there may be a universal perscription for general Launchpad issues. I found this information over on TUAW and it’s referenced from an original article by the folks over at HaiTeq. In those articles it specifically mentions this proceedure for fixing a Lunchpad that is missing newly installed applications. Since it also fixed my keyboard shortcut issue I decided to write it up here and share it for those who may have suffered a similar fate to mine. Here’s the proceedure.

1. Launch Terminal (from /Applications/Utilities/Terminal).
2. Navigate to the Application Support folder in question (cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock)
3. Open the folder (open .) and drag all the .db files to the trash.
4. Restart Dock (sudo killall Dock, followed by authentication)

Small disclaimer. Launchpad is a new technology and mucking about with it’s core files could have unexpected results. Anytime you go messing around in the bowels of the OS there is potential for trouble. This fix seems to have worked for me, but your results might not be the same. You have been warned.

Hooking up the iphone opens iPhoto every time AGAIN, just like it used to be before people complained to apple until they fixed that. Unbelievable! Do you know a fix?

Hey Adam,

I’ve got a new Macbook Pro with OS X and Apps on a 128 Gb SSD in the SuperDrive bay. My data lives on a 1 TB HDD. Right now I have Time Machine backing up the 1TB drive (since OS and Apps are easily reinstalled and the SSD is more durable). The problem is that I need to put my MBP on my desk and plus in the Time Machine drive.

Is there a way to hook up the Time Machine to the USB port on my Airport Extreme and have the MBP connect to the shared drive automatically every time it connects to my WiFi and then have Time Machine back up? It would be sweet to just have the MBP backup automatically every time it’s in range of my WiFi.

Unfortunately that isn’t supported, http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/15139.html

“Time Machine can’t back up to an external disk connected to an AirPort Extreme”

Apple’s only supported solution in the “Airport” line  is the Time Capsule. I believe you may also connect a disk to another Mac and then use file sharing from System Preferences–>Sharing to make the disk available on the network. From there you would be able to mount the shared disk on your Macbook Pro and use Time Machine back up to it. As noted in the article liked to above, both machines need to be running 10.5.6 or later and must be using Apple File Protocol (AFP) file sharing.

There are ways to hack a solution together, but most report mixed results and it’s not supported by Apple. In my opinion you don’t want to have a backup system that could be less than reliable.

Welcome to the inaugural post of the “Maccast Question of the Day”. Today I respond to a question about the iPad and why it never quite seems to know exactly what time it is.

Roger asks:

I have noticed recently that the time settings on my iPad do not match with the time settings on my MacBook even though I have syncronized the two reqularly.  Over a week or so the iPad can be off more than 20 minutes.  I know the MacBook will adjust the system time with input from the Internet.  Does the iPad have a similar capability?  If so, where is the setting?

Funny you should mention this. It depends. Do you have a Wi-fi or 3G model? If you have the 3G model, just turn on the cellular data from Settings–>Cellular Data for a minute or so and it will update the time from the cellular network (this works even if you don’t have an active service contract). On the Wi-fi model, you have to adjust it manually. Apple needs to fix this, but until then we’re apparently SOL. The Mac Observer posted an excellent article about the issue and they recommend an App called Emerald Time (iTunes link) that can get an accurate time from an Internet time server. Unfortunately, while the App can give you an accurate time and tell you how far off the iPads internal clock is, it can’t fix the iPad’s clock (due to API restrictions). You’ll still need to make the adjust manually in the iPad’s Date & Time settings. Why the heck Apple can’t just have the iPad connect to the same Apple network time server it uses for the Mac is beyond me. Even if they didn’t do that couldn’t they at least adjust the clock when you sync it to iTunes? Seems like an area of iOS where Apple definitely needs to devote a little more time, eh?

Adam

One thing I believe users find frustrating about Apple making these kinds of changes is there often isn’t an option added to revert the item back to it’s old functionality or design. In the case of the iTunes 10 “signal” buttons, Apple truly does control the vertical and the horizontal. Or do they?

Take back the horizontal.

Smart Mac Geeks and hackers have found a way to put things back the way they were in iTunes 9 (nod to Macgasm for this trick). This hack does require entering some Terminal commands, so if that makes you nervous you probably want to skip it. For those of you who just can’t stand the new orientation and who are a bit more adventurous, this tip may be your solution. As a final warning, hacking around in the bowels of iTunes and your system always poses a risk. Please make sure you have back-ups and proceed with caution.

Put iTunes 10 “signal” buttons back in horizontal orientation

1. Quit iTunes 10
2. Launch the Terminal (Applications –> Utilities –> Terminal)
3. At the prompt type the following:
   defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -boolean YES

   


4. Hit Enter (the change will be applied even though you’ll not get feedback).
5. Quit the Terminal.
6. Launch iTunes and enjoy your restored “signal” buttons. Ahhh!

If you decide later that Apple was right and vertical is better you can change things back by repeating the steps above and replacing the word ‘YES’ with ‘NO’ in step 3 like so:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -boolean NO

A friend of mine recently posted on Twitter an image like the one above. Very logically he posed this question… How does 3.65 + 0.35 = 3.75? Is this some strange new cult of Apple mathematics? There appeared to be missing 256MB of RAM. Concerned for my friend’s memory loss and a bit puzzled myself, I opened my Activity Monitor. You can see, I had exactly same result. Being the Mac geek that I am, I didn’t panic. I figured there had to be a logical explanation. Maybe this was like hard drives where they say 1 TB on the box, but in reality you get less. That happens because when marketing the hard drive they base the numbers on 1GB equaling 1,000 MB instead of the actual 1024MB that it should. In the case of my RAM that wasn’t it. So what gives?

A quick Google search revealed the logical answer. It’s something I should have realized immediately but didn’t. See, I have a newer 15″ Macbook Pro with an integrated NVIDIA 9400M GPU and it uses… You guessed it. 256MB of shared RAM.

Mystery solved.

Step-by-step
1) Launch Terminal (Applications–>Utilities–>Terminal)
2) Type in the following command:

defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableXRayFolders 1

3) Control+Option+Click the Finder icon in the dock and select ‘Relaunch’ to restart the Finder.
4) Select a folder in the Finder and press the spacebar to open it in Quicklook.
5) The folder icon should now have a transparent cover and you can see the icons of items inside the folder

Secrets – The GUI Method
1) Go to the Blacktree Site and download Secrets
2) Install Secrets. Double-click the .prefpane file and say OK when it asks if you want to install the Preference Pane.
3) Open System Preferences–>Secrets
4) In the ‘Top Secrets’ section check the box next to ‘Show X-ray folders in QuickLook’.
5) Click the ‘Quit This’ button to quit the Finder.
6) Click the Finder icon in the dock to relaunch the Finder.
7) Select a folder in the Finder and press the spacebar to open it in Quicklook.
8) The folder icon should now have a transparent cover and you can see the icons of items inside the folder

a helpful listener sent me a reply with this handy Terminal command to enable it.

defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.mouse MouseMomentumScroll -bool true

After entering the command above into the Termial and hitting enter, simply turn Bluetooth off and then back on to update the setting. After that scroll away with full momentum in Leopard.

To change things back issue the same command, but rplacing the last word ‘true’ with ‘false’ and turn off and back on Bluetooth again.

Also seen in the screenshot is the little envelope icon. This button allows you to share current podcast with a friend via an iTunes Link. This does not work on podcasts not featured in the iTunes store, so if you’re subscribed to an RSS feed you are unable to share.

The feature most important to me for daily use isn’t MMS, but the ability to quickly see the remaining battery life. My way around this was a little app called Free Memory, which has the auxiliary feature of telling you the battery life percentage. The app is still worth keeping around if you own an original iPhone or an iPhone 3G and for the ability to free some memory on your device. For iPhone 3GS owners, you now have a nice little option to show the battery life in the top tray of the iPhone.

To access the battery life option, head over to your settings button on the iPhone home screen. From there tap General, then tap Usage, and there will be a slider button on the top. This option is turned off by default and hidden in a screen most people never make there way into.

iPhone OS 3.0 has been great to me so far, but my big excitement is over the speed of the new 3GS which I was reluctant to pick up at first. A full review of my 16 GB 3GS White will be coming up soon. In the meantime, what features of the iPhone 3.0 update have proved useful to you?

Updated: Added text to help clarify that the battery percentage feature is an iPhone 3GS only feature. Thanks to the astute folks in the comments for pointing this out.

To activate the Voice Control feature:
Press and hold the Home button on your iPhone or press and hold the center button on the iPhone headset. After a second or two the Voice Control interface should appear and you’ll hear a beep indicating it is ready for your command.

Voice commands you can use:

• Call a contact: Say “call” or “dial” plus the name of a person in your contacts to call that person. If they have multiple numbers the iPhone will prompt you for which number, i.e. “Home” or “mobile”.
• Dial a number: Say “call” or “dial” and then the number
• If you make a mistake: You can say “wrong,” “not that one,” “not that,” “no,” or “nope.”
• Play music: Say “play” or “play music.”
• Pause music: Say “pause”
  or “pause music.”
• Change songs: Say “next song” or
  “previous song.”
• Play an album, artist, or playlist: Say “play,” then say “album,” “artist,” or “playlist” and the name.
• To enable shuffle: Say “shuffle.”
• Get current track info: Say “what’s playing,” “what song is this,” “who sings this song,” or “who is this song by.”
• Use Genius: Say “Genius,” “play more like this,” or “play more songs like this.”
• Cancel Voice Control: Say “cancel.”

That’s it. I have to say the Voice Commands work pretty well right out of the box (at least with my “average” anglo saxon US voice). About my only complaints are that you have to constantly go in and out of Voice Command mode using the hold button technique described above and that the default voice is a bit tricky to understand at times. No OS X “Alex” here. That said it’s nice to have voice control on the iPhone (finally) and I look forward to get getting better in future updates.

The import and burning options have actually been moved to other locations. In case you find yourself searching for these options, like I have been over the past few days, here is a quick overview of the process for setting these options in the latest version of iTunes.

Importing Settings

To set the import settings do the following:

1. In iTunes 8, choose ‘Preferences’ from the ‘iTunes’ menu (Command + , ).
2. In the ‘General’ tab, press the ‘Import Settings…’ button.
3. In the dialog box set up your desired import format, bit rate, etc. and click ‘OK’ when finished.

CD Burning

To burn a CD do the following:

1. In iTunes 8 create a playlist. If you want to burn a whole album you can drag the album from the new ‘grid’ view over to the playlist section in the left sidebar. This will create a new “playlist” for that album. Now select the playlist you want to burn.
2. In the lower right corner of the main iTunes window click the ‘Burn Disc’ button.
3. Now in the dialog box set up your desired disc burning options. You can choose the burning device and speed, select the disc format, set the gap between tracks, etc. Then insert a blank disc and click ‘Burn’.

I am not sure why Apple chooses to move major functionality between versions like this. I personally find it annoying, but at least now you know what has changed this time around.

Nova Media today announced introduction of a new version of their FoneLink app, version 2.0, which gives Mac users a really nice tool to keep their mobile phone in sync with contacts, calendar, and media—in ways that iSync can’t. If you know how iTunes lets you sync with your iPhone or iPod, this is the closest thing to it.

FoneLink encapsulates a suite of useful tools beyond the traditional syncing that iSync provides. If your phone supports it, you can sync your contacts, calendars, bookmarks, and notes, and FoneLink allows you to fine tune how you’d like each to sync, separately. This info pulls in from your Address Book or Entourage.

Also synced are your text messages, as the app lets you archive old messages and enables you to send new ones through your mobile phone via FoneLink. Remember when Apple’s own Address Book used to let you do that?

FoneLink has a simple Finder that lets you browse your phone’s contents, as well as memory cards that your phone might have plugged into it. You can drag and drop files and folders to the phone and back.

The Media Center lets you sync music, photos and video to your phone, from iTunes or other files that you drag and drop into the app. The Media Center lets you pick from iTunes playlists or your entire library of songs and videos. Well, what if your phone doesn’t support a specific kind of file type? Media Center seems to know the capabilities of each supported phone, and, with your permission it can convert the files to compatible versions for your phone. You can also instruct it to just sync the ones that are playable, without converting, and leave it at that. I haven’t tested this out, but I don’t think that the Media Center will convert any iTunes DRM’d content, so unless you’ve got all iTunes Plus tracks or stuff you’ve ripped from elsewhere, you might hit a snag here. But blame DRM, not Nova Media.

Photos sync as well, and you can have them automatically resize to match the resolution of your screen—FoneLink already knows the right size for your specific phone.

Media Center also has a ringtone creator. I know I’ve heard from a lot of people that wish they could make snippets of songs into ringtones and save them to their phone—this functionality of Media Center might be worth the price of admission alone for some.

Last but not least is the Time Tunnel. Nova Media wants you to think of this like Time Machine for your phone—and they even embrace celestial background. Essentially what Time Tunnel does is saves snapshots of your phone’s contents—everything including contacts, events, media and your SMS inbox. You can go back and find specific files that you had on your phone, and restore them back.

There are some great screencasts that do a better job explaining FoneLink’s functionality than I ever could.

Some phones FoneLink will support over bluetooth and USB, and if you’re synchronizing a lot of media files, you’re going to want to do things over USB. Some phones have varying compatibility as well, and you can check specifics out here. But generally, if you have one of the following phones, you’re in luck:

Motorola:
KRZR (K1), RAZR V3, RAZR V3x, RAZR V3xx, RAZR V6, RIZR Z3, SLVR L9,

Nokia:
2600 classic, 2760, 3109 classic, 3110 classic, 3120 classic, 3250, 3500 classic, 3555, 5200, 5300, 5310 XpressMusic, 5500, 5610 XpressMusic
5700 XpressMusic, 6021, 6085, 6086, 6110 Navigator, 6111, 6120 classic, 6121 classic, 6124 classic, 6125, 6126, 6131, 6133, 6136, 6151, 6165, 6210 Navigator, 6220 classic, 6233, 6234, 6263, 6267, 6270, 6275, 6280, 6282, 6288, 6290, 6300, 6301, 6500 classic, 6500 slide, 6555, 7070 Prism, 7370, 7373, 7390, 7500 Prism, 7900 Prism, 8600 Luna, 8800 Sirocco, 9300, 9300i, 9500, E50, E51, E60, E61, E61i, E62, E65, E70, E90 Communicator, N71, N73, N75, N76, N77, N78, N80, N81, N82, N91, N92, N93, N93i, N95, N95 8GB, N96

Samsung:
SGH-A737, SGH-D840, SGH-E900, SGH-F300, SGH-G800, SGH-i550, SGH-i560, SGH-L760, SGH-P310, SGH-U700, SGH-X830
SGH-Z150, SGH-Z400, SGH-Z720

Sony Ericsson:
D750i, K320i, K510i, K530i, K550i, K610i, K660i, K700i, K750i, K770i, K790i, K800i, K810i, K850i, S500i, S700i, T650, V600i, V630i, V640i, W300i, W350i, W380i, W550i, W580i, W600i, W610i, W660i, W710i, W760i, W800i, W810i, W830i, W850i, W880i, W890i, W900i, W910i, W980i, Z310i, Z520i, Z550i, Z555i, Z610i, Z710i, Z750i, Z770i, Z800i

If one of the phones above is yours and you want to give FoneLink a try, there’s a demo version here. If you decide to keep it, one license will set you back $33.57, three licenses will be $67.14 and five licenses will cost you $100, all plus VAT tax (Nova Media is a German company located in Berlin). A direct link to the purchase page is here.

Divine Robot has developed a new tool that allows Sony Ericsson mobile users copy and synchronize songs from their iTunes library to their phone.

Mac OS X’s iSync is good for synchronizing your contacts and calendars to your mobile phone, but not so much for your music. iTunes will generally only sync your music with iPods, some older MP3 players, the Motorola ROKR phone, and the iPhone. Not so much help if you want to play songs from your iTunes library on your phone. That’s where the helper-app EasyListening comes in.

Start up the app and plug-in your supported Sony Ericsson phone via USB. Up pops a brushed metal window that looks iSync, showing the name and description of your phone. From there, fire up iTunes and select individual songs or a whole playlist (not supported by all phones) and then drag them to the EasyListening window. You can also use EasyListening to sync songs to a Memory Stick card.

I no longer have a Sony Ericsson phone, so I wasn’t able to test out this application’s syncing abilities, but the process looks to be straight forward. For those of you who have Sony Ericssons, you know the process of dragging and dropping songs to the phone can be difficult, especially because the Mac tends to let invisible files linger. EasyListening ensures that this won’t happen.

EasyListening gives you a couple options in the preferences, allowing you to either copy the songs over to the phone or synchronize a playlist (presumably two way), and where you want the app to save the music, to internal memory or memory card.

EasyListening reportedly generally works with the following Sony Ericsson phones:

K510, K530, K550, K610, K630, K660, K750, K770, K790, K800, K810, K850, T650, S500, V630, W200, W300, W380, W550, W580, W600, W610, W660, W700, W710, W800, W810, W880, W890, W900, W910, Z530, Z550, and Z610.

Keep in mind, however, that because of Digital Rights Management (DRM) on certain iTunes songs, not all tracks will work on your Sony Ericsson phone. unDRM’d iTunes Plus songs should work fine.

If you want to try it out, Divine Robot provides a demo which limits you to 3 song transfers at a time, and if you want to buy, the app will set you back $10.

Instant Messaging: There are a few options here but Meebo easily provides the best experience. It is essentially the same as the other options, however with Meebo you can use your existing account to log into multiple IM accounts at the same time. This however has a secondary purpose that makes it so great. When you’re instant messing with Edge there is a good chance you will get disconnected and miss parts of the conversation. Meebo enables logging when you sign up for an account, so you never miss any part of any conversation, and can refer back to it  at any time. http://meebo.com – automatically loads iPhone version upon visit.

Photo sharing: A sometimes forgotten feature of Flickr, Ringo, and other photo sites is the ability to add photos via e-mail. While this method isn’t as snazzy as iFlickr, you do have options of sending your photos with titles, descriptions, tags, and privacy settings. For your own e-mail upload addresses check in your Flickr or Ringo tools section. I suggest adding them as contacts with simple name like “flickr public” and “flickr friends.”

Netflix: While the iPhone does provide full access to the web, some sites are just a pain to navigate in a small screen. Netflix does not have an iPhone specific mobile site, but they do have a plain Jane one that allows full queue management and search functionality. The only drawback with using this site outside of it not looking pretty, is the lack of a webclip icon. https://www.netflix.com/Mobile/Login

Movie Times: Fandango and MovieTickets both have iPhone sites, but you may find them unintuitive and clunky, taking too long to find a movie in your area. Google however has a less pretty, but much faster solution – which is all the more important when you’re not on a WiFi network. Enter your zip and it shows movies, average ratings and reviews, and links to purchase tickets for multiple theaters in the area. http://www.google.com/movies?sc=1&hl=en&near=&rl=1

Your other option is Cinema – A newer webapp I switched to just today that has a great interface and is slightly easier to read than Google Showtimes. The drawback in comparison is the lack of reviews and IMDB links. http://themacbox.co.uk/iphone/cinema/

TV Times: A simple TV Guide is exactly what it claims to be. It allows you to sort by day or channels, change time zones easily, and search for specific shows. http://tv.comoki.com

Games: Unfortunately the nature of web apps limits the control you have for gaming in a browser, so you cannot expect much more than puzzle games and Myst-like point and tap adventures. There are  plenty of TicTacToe games and the like, but frankly it’s silly to do those games on iPhone when you can use a napkin or piece of paper without any load times. I find iSudoku, iPipes, and Bewjewled kill time the fastest in a doctors office or on the train.

Podcasting: To catch the latest podcasts without syncing your phone you can use Podcaster. You can add your favorites directly from your iTunes Library and find new podcasts within the app. The only downside of listening through your browser is that you cannot surf to other places while the file is playing. Some of my favorite podcasts are BuzzOutLoud, Gadgettes, Cranky Geeks and of course The MacCast (/shameless plug). http://podcaster.soprotech.com/

Passwords: We’ve talked about it many times, and now 1Password can sync to your iPhone and uses unique, secure bookmarks to autofill forms on websites. Your longwindedly secure passwords now don’t have to be typed out! 1Password has an extremely generous trial and is very affordable.

That’s all for now. I will follow up soon with more web apps and tips for making the most out of your iPhone. As as side note, users who bank with Bank of America have an amazing web app that gives you access to your account and finds ATM locations. Definitely worth checking out, even if you use another bank. The side is so good it makes me want to switch over from Commerce.

I am not sure how long this has been around in Firefox, but at least in the latest version of Firefox 3 beta for Mac I stumbled cross this trick. This morning while working on other things I accidentally dropped a folder from the Finder into a Firefox window I had in the background. Imagine my surprise when I saw what you see in the image above. Firefox displayed the contents of the folder in a file browser like structure. I could navigate up and down the directory tree and there was even an option to turn on and off viewing of invisible files. I did notice that it won’t allow you to navigate to the root of your hard drive, but files that can be viewed normally in a browser (like image files or Quicktime movies) will show up right inside Firefox. They have also done a very nice job with the user interface. It sorta reminds me of .Mac.

Now normally this shouldn’t be surprising considering that many browsers can view file systems on remote servers (if the feature is turned on and allowed in the server configuration), but this works locally. I also know that Internet Explorer on Windows has been able to do this trick for years, but this is on a Mac. The trick also does not work in Safari, at least not in the current version of Safari running under OS 10.5.2.

MobileCast is a native iPhone app, not a web app. So, at least until Apple puts out their SDK, you’re going to need to jailbreak your iPhone / iPod Touch to install this app. If you’re running a recent version of the Installer.app, MobileCast can be found in the Multimedia category. Tap to install it, like any other app. After you exit the installer, MobileCast’s icon should be located on your Springboard (the home app menu).

When you launch the app, you’ll first need to add some RSS feeds in. Unfortunately, this process hasn’t been streamlined yet, so you’re going to have to manually type in each podcast feed or point the app to an opml file with all your feeds. This is pretty tedious, but hey, that’s what having a full keyboard on your phone is for, right?

After you’ve typed in a few podcasts feeds, save them, and you’ll see them listed by name in the main screen. Tap on a podcast and you’ll get a long list of all the episodes you can choose to download. Select one and tap the “download” button and you’ll get a progress bar showing how much you’ve got downloaded. If you’re running on the EDGE network, this will probably take some time, so you’re probably better off doing this on a WiFi network. But, unlike the Mobile iTunes Store, at least you have the option to get content when you’re out of WiFi range.

After you’ve successfully downloaded an episode, the red dot next to the episode will turn green. Select it and you’ll see the “download” button switches to “play.” When you hit play, the episode plays in MobileCast itself, showing the cover art of the episode. At the bottom you’ll see a time slider and a pause/play button. It’s a lot like the iPod player, but missing some features like volume control (the hardware buttons on the iPhone should work fine, but those on the iPod touch might be out of luck with this version of the software) and the ability to skip ahead to different chapters in the podcast. Also, like many of the 3rd party iPhone apps, MobileCast doesn’t yet respect the mute switch on the side of the iPhone.

The current released version of MobileCast can only playback audio podcasts, however, a beta version is supposed to playback video. Hopefully that feature as well as some of the control issues will be addressed soon.

If you’re dying to download podcasts on your iPhone or iPod Touch just like you download emails or webpages, you should give MobileCast a try. If you like it a lot, you might throw Matthew a few bucks toward Matthew via PayPal so he can continue development.

1.) Backup!

It can never be said enough, or practiced enough- there is never a backup that’ll you do that you’ll curse, save for the times when you overwrite an existing backup you later realize you need. When leopard hits and Apple’s own built-in, dead-simple approach to backing up your files with Time Machine lands on Mac desktops & hard drives everywhere, perhaps this message will become less important.

But before you upgrade, it’s the single most important step. With a full bootable backup, you can botch your upgrade beyond any tawdry 1.1.1 iPhone bricking ever done, and still in a moment’s grace boot from your backup and recover. Consider CarbonCopyCloner (already Leopard ready) from Bombich Software to make your bootable clone.

2.) Sour Milk Apps

There’s nothing like incompatible, out-of-date software that ‘sort-of’ runs on a new OS to give you an upgrade headache. To ensure that you’re running the latest and greatest for all the applications on your system, try the free ‘Application Update‘ widget by Georg C. Kaindl.

The widget can be configured to check the versions of your existing applications against those listed on MacUpdate and Version Tracker and provides links to download the latest versions of them.

If you’re even more astutue, check wit the application’s author to find out whether the application(s) you have are Leopard-ready or not.

3.) What’s Starting Up Might Slow You Down

Check your startup items (System Preferences-> User Accounts-> Login Items tab) for any items that might not play nice with Leopard. For example, I have Quicksilver, StickyWindows, and Smart Scroll X all set to start when I boot or Log In to Tiger. For the upgrade, I will remove these items from the list, and have Apple-only items in the list remaining.

Secondly, I’ll check with the software’s authors for any updates known to be compatible with Leopard, and install them if available after upgrading. If not, I’ll wait until they are before attempting to use them. Most developers have prepared at least betas which work with Leopard, while others can be expected to have Leopard ready versions of their software within a month or so. That said, the vast majority of programs will work out-of-the-box with Leopard.

4.) Virginize Tiger

While iPhone unlockers clamor to have a ‘re-virginizer’ to clean up their hacked phones for the 1.1.1 update, so to should Tiger users with OS mods get them out if possible. Software like Unsanity’s Application Enhancer, Interacto’s UNO gui changer, and other application specific modifications like Kent Sutherland’s Chax for iChat should be uninstalled for good measure.

As with before, check with the authors of your modification software for Leopard compatibility. Likely if you don’t install these mods you won’t be able to uninstall them properly after the upgrade, and they won’t work either.

5.) Time Machine Should Be All Alone

Post-install, let’s assume you’re up and running and everything ‘appears’ to be going smoothly. You’re cruising through Coverflow in the Finder; wasting precious working time moving application windows near the dock to see the reflection effect; building Stacks and Spaces, and cycling through the new desktop backgrounds. All may seem okay, but that’s no reason to destroy that backup of your previous system. If you setup Time Machine, do it on a fresh partition on an external drive separate from your pre-upgrade backup.

Should anything go awry and you need to recover files, applications or settings that you had from before you switched cats, you’ll be glad you kept that backup. After a few months down the road when you’re racing along with Leopard, feel free to delete that old dusty backup if you need the space.

Hopefully the above tips help those who’ll be upgrading soon. If there are any other tips you readers think of to help with the transistion, feel free to post them in the comments.

Happy upgrades, all.

So here is what needs to be done. First, get a Leopard compatible Mac. Take the older Mac start it up in target disk mode and connect it to the LCM (Leopard Compatible Mac) via a Firewire cable. Insert the Leopard installation disk in the LCM and start the installation process. When the installer asks where Leopard is to be installed, specify the Target Disk Mode connected Mac’s hard drive. Complete the installation process and once the LCM has happily booted from the new system shut it down, disconnect the older Mac, and power it down. Start the older Mac up and it should now be running Leopard.

Some caveats before doing this your own.

First: Running Leopard on Macs that do not meet the stated system requirements is not supported by Apple and they will not provide Leopard technical support for this configuration. Do this at your own risk.

Second: Do not use this technique from an INTEL-based Mac, only use qualified G4 or G5 processor Macs. The partitioning scheme for INTEL Macs is different and INTEL Macs can’t boot from drives formatted to boot PowerPC Macs and vice versa.

Third: Older Macs may not have enough processor horsepower, bus speed, or video RAM to effectively run Leopard (Forget about G3 Macs, there’s a reason they are excluded from the system requirements. Trying to boot a G3 Mac from a Leopard drive results in a kernel panic, I’ve tried). Leopard works just fine on my 800 MHz Powerbook, but older 400 MHz systems with a sub-200 MHz bus, and less than 32 MB of VRAM may have problems (unsure of your Mac’s specs, download Mactracker, a database tracking all Macs models ever made, www.mactracker.ca).

Fourth: Before you attempt this tip, be sure to back up all your critical data (maybe even clone the boot drive). Never perform major upgrades of any kind without backing up.

Trying to give an older Mac new Leopard super coolness, could work out great, or it could be time for a new Mac.

Number One: First Isn’t Always Best
Technology always needs early adopters, brave souls living on the bleeding edge trying each new electronic gadget or software program because they are driven to be the first. They are the ones who take the punches, suffer the glitches, crashes, and report the bugs that are inevitable with new technology and software, and many times provide workarounds and fixes. More cautious Mac users should follow the basic tech rule, “Never buy version one of anything.” Some may argue Leopard is just the evolution of the current Mac OS, and while it’s Officially Mac OS X 10.5, it’s still version one of Leopard. Wait a few weeks after Leopard’s release into the wild to see what problems, gotchas, and solutions the first adopters discover. This makes transitioning from Tiger to Leopard smoother and less painless. Places to check to see what is going on with Leopard include Apple’s support site for Mac OS X (www.apple.com/support/leopard/) where there will be technotes regarding problems and solutions, and forums where other users discuss their experiences; our own MacCast, as well as MacFixit.com (www.macfixit.com) and Macintouch (www.macintouch.com).

Number Two: Are you Mac Enough?
Apple has significantly raised the bar for which Macs can have Leopard intalled. If your Mac doesn’t meet the new system requirements for running Leopard It’s necessary to either upgrade your existing Mac or purchase a new one. Really the only Mac upgrades for Leopard compatibility are add RAM or hard disk space. Many Macs with third party processor upgrades may still not allow Leopard to be installed, so check with the manufacturer about Leopard compatibility. If buying a new Mac, Leopard will be included in one of three ways depending on when the new Mac was purchased. Leopard is either pre-installed on the hard drive, included as an installation disk in the box, or available through Apple’s up-to-date program (www.apple.com/macosx/uptodate/), which entitles those who purchased a new Mac in October before Leopard’s release to get a free copy (although there is a $9.95 shipping and handling charge).

Number Three: Critical Software Used is not Leopard Compatible.
Current programs, drivers and System Preferences installed on your Mac may not all be Leopard compatible. Adobe and Filemaker have already made announcements regarding compatibility issues with their software running on Leopard. Definitely wait to upgrade to Leopard until the software that you need to use is compatible. Check with developers to find out when a patches or upgrades to provide Leopard compatibility will be available. Also check Versiontracker (www.versiontracker.com) for Leopard compatible software updates. It’s also best to upgrade your software before upgrading Leopard, especially software that installs kernel extensions or System Preferences.
Mac users still using Classic Mac OS programs should note that Leopard cannot run Classic at all, so it will be necessary to finally migrate to Mac OS X native versions of any Classic programs being used before upgrading to Leopard.

Number Four: Critical Hardware Used is not Leopard Compatible.
Just as in number three above, third party hardware, video cards, hard drive controllers or other expansion cards, printers, scanners, etc. may not work fully or at all under Leopard. This is currently a problem for users of high end video cards from BlackMagic Design and AJA, who cater primarily to the digital video industry. Definitely check with the manufacturer of any third party hardware that is installed to verify both driver and firmware compatibility with Leopard.

Number Five: Never Upgrade Software (including operating systems) in the Middle of a Project.
In the middle of a critical project? Wait until the project is complete before upgrading to Leopard. Upgrading could introduce problems that can slow or stop the work that is currently being done while you (or the IT department) have to troubleshoot the issues. It could be something as simple as a function or service that has been moved in Mac OS or as complex as dangerous hardware/software interactions, but always stick with the old adage, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Bonus Reason: Wait to Upgrade until Your Data is Backed Up.
It goes without saying, but never perform a major upgrade of software or hardware without first making a back up of all your important data.

For those of you who can’t wait to upgrade to Leopard, but still want to have a better experience doing it, check out Adam Engst’s Take Control eBook site for “Take Control of Upgrading to Leopard” ($10, http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/).

Treat this new Mac OS X more like a real Leopard and it won’t bite you.

One of my previous posts pre-iPhone, I wrote about how there were ways to work around the iPhone’s limitations, and how you could use email to send your photos to Flickr. Well now, thanks to some hacker/tinkerers, we have a 3rd party native iPhone app that does the job splendidly!

The app is called iFlickr. It can be installed via the Installer.app hack which is really the only (read: easiest) way to install 3rd party apps on your phone. New and improved applications are finding their way to the iPhone every day—from an old-school NES game player to IM applications, a webserver, one-off iPhone-unique games like Lights Off and Tap Tap Revolution, all among many others. No, they’re not all perfect, some in alpha or beta in quality, but these apps are diverse in function and imaginative.

Back to the app at hand—iFlickr. Whereas before the only way to upload your photos directly from the iPhone was send them via email, now iFlickr lets you take a shot and as soon as its saved, it’s simultaneously uploaded to your flickr account, in 1024×768 resolution. Currently the upload doesn’t use the full capability of the 2MP iPhone, but it is better than the via email solution, which downsizes outbound images to 640×480.

Getting iFlickr to work your flickr account is a little complicated. I’d recommend reading the instructions on iFlickr’s website before trying to set things up. It requires “authorizing” the app via a flickr webpage and token serial number. Once this is added to the app’s preferences and the app is restarted, things are ready to go. Right now, I’m using version 0.0.3, which is the third version in the past two days, and the options are limited. First is to save photos to the iPhone before sending to flickr. Second is to take photos rapid-fire, as quickly as every 20sec.

Taking photos works pretty much like the native camera app on the iPhone, except it’s GUI is not as nice. The shutter button doesn’t really “depress” when you tap it, nor do you see those shutter animations, but functionally it’s the same.

If you want to see the photos you shot, you’ll find them in your iPhone’s photo album. You’ll also find them almost instantaneously in your flickr photo stream—really, it’s fast. All photos uploaded with iFlickr are titled “iflickr” until you change them.

Hopefully future updates will add some additional functionality. What I’d like to see is some ability to pre-tag and label your photos before their sent. Easier setup is definitely in order. Full resolution uploads would be cool. A nicer GUI would be, well, nice. And a direct link to the photo album, both on the web as well as on the iPhone would be helpful.

iFlickr is a great start to a very useful app for the iPhone. If you haven’t tried 3rd party apps on your iPhone, don’t be afraid and jump right in.

First a package is a special type of folder in Mac OS X that behaves like a file. Packages (also referred to as bundles) can contain files, other folders and resources related to the type of package they are. Common Mac OS X packages are applications, documents created by some applications (like Pages and Keynote) and installation packages.

Double clicking on a package doesn’t open the folder into a new folder view in the Finder like normal folders. Instead it launches as an application (if it’s an application package), launch the application it’s related to (if it’s a document package), or launch the Mac OS X installer program (if it;s an installer package).

This brings us back to iPhoto ’08′s new Library package (see Figure 2). Double-clickiing on the new iPhoto Library will not open it as a new folder view in the finder, but instead launches iPhoto (if it’s not already open) or switches to iPhoto (if it is open). Does that mean that you are no longer able to access the photos stored in the Library package at all? No. Here is a simple workaround.

Figure 1: The original iPhoto Library Folder format.

Figure 2: The new iPhoto ’08 Library package format.

It is possible to view the contents of a package by control-clicking (with a single button mouse) or right=clicking (with a two-button mouse) on the package and selecting Show Package Contents from the shortcut menu that appears (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Right or Control-Click on the new iPhoto Library package and choose Show Package Contents.

A new Finder window appears displaying what’s inside the package. So right or control-click on the iPhoto Library entry in the Pictures Folder and select Show Package Contents (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: The contents of the iPhoto Library package.

In the iPhoto Library Window make aliases of the Following Folders: Data, Modified, and Originals. Put the aliases in the Pictures folder (you might create a new folder to hold them). Now you can access any of the photos that are stored in iPhoto directly in the Finder or any other application, via these aliases.

On reason given for Apple changing to this new format for the iPhoto Library is to prevent or reduce the chance of the iPhoto Library becoming corrupt due to users having direct access to the iPhoto Library Folder. It should be noted that Aperture, Apple’s Pro photo software’s libraries are also in package format.

Every wireless network has a threshold of bandwidth available on it which is somewhat in flux, due to the distances the connections are made at; the variety of devices on a network and their respective transfer speeds; and the amount of traffic on the network at the time you make a transfer.

Making a transfer of a 1.18GB video file from my Core2Duo Macbook wirelessly to an Ethernet wired Core2Duo iMac through my 802.11n Airport Extreme, I achieve wireless speeds of around 11.3Mb/sec. In terms of time, that 1.18GB video file took less than a minute to complete.

Making the same transfer with both computers wirelessly connected to the Airport Extreme, the transfer speeds were more than sliced in half. Why?

It may seem obvious to some, but the reason why the speeds are sliced in half for the two computers on the same 802.11n network with no other congestion, connected less than 20 feet from the base station- is simple: There’s a two-way connection happening on both computers, splitting the wireless bandwidth in half, and then some.

The router communicates with the iMac and vice versa, and to and from the MacBook simultaneously.

In order to significantly speed things up, I’ve hard-wired the iMac with Ethernet, and achieve the higher speeds for file transfers both coming from the iMac to other computers, and to the iMac from my wireless Macs.

Forget AirDisk
The above method also beats Apple’s AirDisk solution as well. Wireless transfers to an AirDisk give, at best, around 380Mb/sec transfer speeds for me. The bottleneck is USB itself, with a limitation of around 400 Mb, which is, in real-world transfers, often slower. Connecting an external hard drive to your Ethernet wired Mac and mounting it in the Finder will yield faster network transfers using backup utilities or applications over the network.

Music and movies both play flawlessly using the one-way method. Having an external, wireless iTunes library is very feasible on an 802.11n one-way wireless network, such as I have setup.

And if you’re looking for an extremely simple and configurable solution for quickly sending files between Macs, use the donation-ware networking tool form 10base-T interactive, DropCopy.

DropCopy places a small, translucent circle on your desktop which, when dragging a file to it, will reveal the other computers via Bonjour on your network, allowing you to send files directly without having to first mount their drives on your computer.

The only caveat is that you must have DropCopy installed on all the Macs you want to send files to or from on your network. The website offers step-by-step instructions to setup everything easily and quickly.

If you’re looking to beef-up the speed of your wireless network, consider this one-way solution. Whether it’s large files, wireless backup, or just less congestion overall on your wireless network, hard-wiring a Mac that is going to bear the brunt of heavy traffic is the way to go.

Uploading photos to the Web:

Even though we don’t have a special 3rd party photo uploading tool on the iPhone like we do on the Mac, many web2.0 photo sharing services provide other means of uploads. One of the most popular is Flickr.com. Flickr provides its users a special email address that will receive and post your image. Log into flickr.com and then go here to find your special email address. To provide more detail to your uploaded image, here’s a cheat sheet:

subject line = title

body = description

tags = in the email’s body or subject put “tags:” followed by the tags as you would normally add them to a flickr photo.

limiting who can see your photos = in the prefix (just before the “@”) of your special flickr email, add “+friends” for friends only, add “+family” for family only, “+ff” for friends and family, and lastly, “+private” to make the images only visible to you.

Of course, this isn’t specific to iPhone, so if you want to use this method to post your Flickr photos, it should work just fine.

IM:

iPhone so far is email and SMS texting only; no native iChat client yet. However, there may be a few ways to get around that limitation.

IM over SMS: iChat on the Mac gives you the ability to send SMS messages and have a two-way conversation that way. To do this, launch iChat on your Mac, using the phone number of person you’d like to message with, in the File menu, select “New Chat with Person…”. You’ll next receive a chat window with a drop down box with AIM pre-selected, and an area that lets you add a person’s address. Here you will add a person’s phone number, but use the prefix “+1” before the number. So, if the person’s number you want to text is: (202) 555-1212, then you’d put +12025551212 in this text field.

After you do that and send your first message, AIM will notify you that the message has been sent through their SMS gateway, but shortly thereafter, the mobile user (or hopefully iPhone user) will be able to reply to you directly.

I’m still testing this on my own Nokia cell phone, but I believe you can initiate a message from the mobile as well. To do this, create a text message and in the address put “265060” and in the body of your message, type out the username with a colon and then the rest of your message. So, if the name of the user you want to send to is “iloveiphone24”, then start out the body of the message with “iloveiphone24:”, without the quotes.

Remember, if you’re an iPhone subscriber, the default plan “only” gives you 200 messages a month, so you might consider using this sparingly.

IM over the Web: There may yet be some web-based alternatives for IM. The issue really comes down to how the web-app is enabled. For the iPhone, it has to be basic, unfortunately, and that means no Flash or Java (javascript is okay). For the moment, that knocks out eBuddy (though they say Safari support is coming soon—hopefully that means the iPhone too).

Since I don’t have an iPhone in hand, I’ve tried to setup the next best thing—my Mac with Safari Beta 3, with all plugins and Java disabled (javascript still enabled). Here were the two IM over the Web services I tried:

• Meebo functioned just fine, and appears only to need java-script enabled. This fantastic web-app gives you access to AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, and MSN Live Messenger. It’s all text based, no voice or anything super advanced. Granted, formatted for a MacBook’s resolution, I had no problems. We’ll see how things look on the iPhone, but some comments on the Meebo Blog suggest that those lucky few with an iPhone already are have used the service and it works fine.

• AIM Express from AOL worked fine on my Mac but didn’t function with javascript turned off, so hopefully that’s a good sign for future iPhone users that it will function just fine. Again, very basic access to AIM, but if you need it in a pinch, it’s likely AIM Express will do the job on the iPhone.

What apps do you think are missing from iPhone and how do you plan to get around it?

PS—Are there any MacCast readers who plan on standing in line on Friday for the iPhone, who live in the Washington, DC area? I’m still figuring things out, but I think I’m going to Fashion Center at Pentagon City, but the more friends in line, the better! It might be helpful to coordinate amongst ourselves, so I started a thread in the MacCast Forum. And if you’re in DC and plan on standing in line, please let me know—line buddies are a good thing!

In addition to being glossy white, the Nintendo Wii is quite Macintosh friendly from a network perspective. Wii will play nicely with your Mac even at this early juncture in the it’s lifespan, with more (wired and wireless) innovations coming shortly.

Today, there are a few notable applications to get you started playing your iTunes music , watching videos, and showing photos using your Wii and all can be ready in a matter of minutes using your home network.


Get your iTV now, by using your Wii
Here’s a nice and easy way to stream media content off your Mac and onto your Wii. Red Kawa has released the Wii Media Center X server. Red Kawa had this to say…

“Wii Media Center X is a free multimedia server developed by Red Kawa. It allows you to stream certain types of pictures, music, videos and files from your computer (where the server running) to your Nintendo Wii. It runs on most major operating systems including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Videos – Wii Media Center X lets you stream and watch videos in the Flash video format (FLV) on your Wii.

Music – Wii Media Center X lets you playback MP3s on your Wii without the need of an SD card.

Pictures – Red Kawa Media Center lets you view pictures on your Wii without the need of an SD card.

Files – Wii Media Center X lets you browse your files located on your server.”

Red Kawa goes on to offer tutorials on how to create the various types of media that the software uses as well as setting everything up correctly. There are caveats, however, as this software is in Alpha, and there are known issues.

Now that the Wii Opera Browser has finally been released, we were finally able to test Wii Media Center X on the Wii and like a lot of you have mentioned, we’ve also noticed that there are major issues.

Since the Wii browser only supports Flash 7 and does not support LiveConnect, you will most likely encounter problems using the slideshow or my music features. Also there are reports of choppy video in the My Video’s section.

We wanted to let you know that we are aware of these issues and are working on fixing them. Our plan of attack is to first get the Video section working well and then move onto the other sections.

A WiiPort Express with DOT.TUNES

DOT.TUNES, a flash-based web application that allows you to Stream music across the internet securely with friends, family and clients, now has a web-tutorial showing how using the Wii’s custom Opera Browser can be turned into an iTunes streaming music destination, in a few clicks.

Step 1 – Visit DOT.TUNES and download the Mac or Windows application. It comes with a 15 day full featured version so you can get it up and running before the need to register.

Step 2 – Launch DOT.TUNES, open the preferences and create an admin user/pass to secure your music and access advanced features.

Step 3 – Login to your new music server with the user/pass you created.

Step 4 – Click Admin Controls to view the Advanced functions including the Flash Control Center.

Step 5 – Finally, use the Flash Controls to select which artist, album or playlist you would like to stream, how many tracks to display etc.

That’s it.

The Flash Player will then appear on your Wii Opera browser and you can play all your mp3 files through your telvision audio system.

I’m sure more innovations with media integration and personal computing will follow with the Wii, as the 2 UB 2.0 ports on the back of the player prompt possibility and potential for plugging in an external drive with media on it and using it to play movies, music, or even act as a NAS (network Attached Storage) solution.

If you’ve got yourself a Wii already, be sure to try the above apps and post a comment on the ease/quality of use. I’m still on my own personal Wii hunt, which, with any luck might end this afternoon.

Listener Jason pointed me to this video tip he found posted over on lifehacker.com. I figured, since many of you may be new iPod owners, you could find this useful. Personally, I don’t have much love for the iPod earbuds and use a pair of over-the-ear Sony headphones. I do however, carry my original iPod earbuds as backup up, so this tip will help me keep things untangled in my laptop bag. It’s sometimes the simple things that make me smile.

So you just bought your parents or significant other a shiny new iPod for the holidays. Great, but now your ears are burning with questions like, “How do get my CDs on this thing?” or “Why are my favorite playlists not syncing?” or “How can I subscribe to this podast?”. Well don’t worry because we got your back. Our good friend Richard Tanner (writer of the ever popular, “Hitchhikers Guide to the Macintosh” series) has put together a helpful “Beginners Guide to iTunes” (PDF ~2.1MB). This is the perfect companion for any new iPod owner who needs a little help getting started with iTunes 7. The well organized 16 page guide is in a printable PDF format and includes helpful full color screenshots to guide a new user through all aspects of using iTunes. Now, Richard is from the UK so the guide (and some language) does skew slightly toward the other side of the pond, but the concepts taught are all solid and should translate regardless of your geographic location. I hope you find it helpful and a big thanks to Richard for taking the time for sharing this with the community.

Download your free Beginners Guide to iTunes (PDF ~2.1MB) by Richard Tanner

In a series of posts, I’ll be exploring the past, present and future of Apple’s wireless networking strategy, from 1999 to the impact of Apple’s newest Atheros-based Airport cards in the latest Core 2 Duo Macs, and what it means for compatibility and performance in the short and long term.

I’ll also be detailing some Airport tips and tricks, as well as covering security, setups, and troubleshooting strategies.

The Wireless Revolution
After 7 years, Apple’s wireless Internet and networking solution, Airport, has come a long way, as has the rest of the wireless industry when it comes to networking and internet sharing.

Stability, security, speed, and distance have all improved over the original incarnations of wireless offerings, so much so that Cable and DSL modems offering ‘broadband’ internet service often do not reach the data speed that wireless networking operating in either an 802.11g or 802.11g capacity can reach.

While most business critical and larger networking environments prefer, and sometimes require the faster ethernet-based wired solutions for overall speed and performance, wireless networking and internet usage has become the norm, especially where portable computers are concerned. Home users are quickly adopting the technology, and schools everywhere are offering access to the internet and networks wirelessly.

It’s 2006, and wireless networking has exploded, with more and more businesses and residential dwellings converting to the technology. More homes in North America have more than one computer than ever before, and wireless technology is both fast enough and easy enough to setup for most people to give it a try. I’m sitting in a local cafe that offers free wireless internet, and my airport icon shows 8 other networks within range in an urban centre bustling with pre-Christmas buzz.

When leaving Toronto after a meeting a few months back I remember going home on the train, and while looking at all the apartment buildings and housing developments I thought I wonder how many people have wireless internet connections? Opening up the iBook I owned at the time, I thought I’d see just how many wireless networks I could log with MacStumbler. To my absolute astonishment, after passing only 10 apartment buildings and a small slew of joined housing, I logged 158 wireless networks.

Consider that I was inside a train, and well over several hundred feet from the buildings and houses I was logging these connections from.

Sales Upward

The Pelorus Group says wireless data revenues in the United States will increase dramatically through 2010. A research report, “Mobile Browsing and Internet Connectivity: The Rise of Wireless Internet Services,” issued by the company reports the following:

The outlook for wireless data content services, including mobile browsing and Internet connectivity, in the U.S. over the next five years is rock solid.

At just over $7.2 billion in 2005, wireless data revenues are expected to surge seven-fold by 2010. Revenues from mobile browsing and Internet connectivity will register a robust growth from just under $1.7 billion during 2005 to $23.6 billion by year-end 2010.

What Is That Alien Thing?

AirPort debuted on July 21, 1999 at the Macworld Expo in New York City with Steve Jobs picking up an iBook supposedly to give the cameraman a better shot as he surfed the Web—the applause quickly built as people realized there were no wires.

Along with the Airport card for new Macs at the time came the Graphite Airport Base Station, a device that looked more like a small alien craft than a router. Apple had enabled it’s users (or anyone with an 802.11b compatible card) to connect wirelessly to the internet and network wirelessly, albeit at only 11Mbps. Discontinued in 2004, the original Airport Card is still a very popular commodity, fetching upwards of a $100 U.S. as a result on the used market.

Following the Graphite Base Station was the second generation Dual-Ethernet Base Station, introduced in November of 2001. It was now white, and dubbed ‘snow’. This Base Station improved in several ways from the original, and now allowed up to 50 clients over the original 10, had greater range and better encryption support, and was Windows PC compatible. Also new was the ability to connect to America Online‘s dial-up service—a feature unique to Apple base stations. This model was based on Motorola‘s PowerPC 860 processor.

It was clear Apple was moving towards grabbing more of the professional market, feeling confident that both internet sharing and networking had a bright future in a wireless world.

For some great software and help guide Airport resources, check out Apple’s Airport Software compatibility guide, and Mac 101: Internet Issues for help on configuring your Airport setup correctly, or resolving existing issues.

In Part 2, I’ll be discussing the more current Airport technologies, and discussing tools and tips for making the most of your Airport Extreme network.

Recently, a hack was developed that finally gives Mac users access to the content stored on their TiVo, a service that TiVo had promised but up to now has only allowed to PC users with TiVo-To-Go. I decided to take a look at the latest developments of this hack, for personal playback on my Mac.

A Quick Lay of the Land

The original hack is a command-line / Terminal tool, credited to Jeremy Drake and a number of other contributors, dubbed “tivodecode.” From there, a good how-to was written by Dave Zatz, and although it was written well, the method isn’t exactly user-friendly. From there, other folks put together some Automator actions, droplets, etc, but there’s only one that I’ve seen so far that actually works like a Mac app, and that’s TiVoDecode Manager, by David Benesch.

Hands on with TiVoDecode Manager

I should first say that this application is a “work in progress,” as the developer notes, “Some things may break as others are being fixed. Use at your own risk.” I would call it more than a proof-of-concept, maybe an “alpha,” (pre-beta software). It worked somewhat inconsistently for me before figuring things out and it may require many restarts and trashing of preferences to make it work more consistently.

To start things off, here are a few requirements:

• A networked, non-DirecTV version of the Series 2 TiVo.
• Knowledge of the TiVo’s IP address on your local network.
• Your TiVo’s Media Access Key (MAK) (enabled in your personal account area of the TiVo website).
• An alternate Mac OS X media player app, like MPlayer OS X or VLC (Quicktime won’t playback these files, as of yet).
• Some time, persistence, and willingness to tinker.

That last bullet is really important. If you’re not willing to play around with this, you’re better off waiting just a little longer for others to exorcise the bugs.

For those of you still with us, the TiVoDecode Manager’s interface is fairly straight forward, clothed in old-school brushed metal. Although the app can find my TiVo via Bonjour on the local network, it didn’t seem to want to input its IP address in the proper box, so I had to do that manually (if you don’t know your TiVo’s IP address, this link might be helpful). Next was to input my TiVo’s Media Access Key, you can find out more about how to obtain that here. From there, just click the “Connect to TiVo” button and soon you should see a list of the content stored on your TiVo.

There are two settings you might want to play with: your default download location (default is to your Desktop); and, the download format. As of version 1.5, the developer gives you the choice of MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 for iPod. The MPEG-4 support didn’t work for me and stalled my downloads (per the developer’s website, this MPEG-4 feature should be made Universal soon), so I just left it at the native MPEG-2, which worked fine.

For a test, I selected a 1/2 hour show on my TiVo, clicked the “Download & Decode Show” button, at the bottom of the window you should see a progress bar showing how much of the TV show your TiVo recorded is flowing to your Mac. These files are large—one 1/2 hour show was 800.5MB, so make sure you have enough room and a capable network. If you’re running wirelessly, as I was, this is going to take a while, because the TiVoDecode Manager is now only transferring the video file, but it’s also decoding it. You can only download one program at a time, and the app allows you to queue additional desired programs (hint: if you find that a download doesn’t start, especially after you’ve repeatedly asked it to download, try severing your Mac’s network connection to stop any downloads in progress, and then try again).

After a few tries (again, I said you might have to tinker!), I was able to watch an episode of PBS’ MotorWeek on my PowerBook with MPlayer, at what I believe is 640×480 resolution (sorry I can’t be exact, MPlayer doesn’t want to “show info” on the video). I haven’t tried transcoding the MPEG-2 video to another format for playback on other devices, mainly because I don’t have an iPod with video.

Conclusion

The TiVoDecode Manager is a good first step toward creating a user-friendly app that downloads your TiVo recordings to your Mac. Yes, it’s buggy and will likely try your patience, but in the weeks to come, expect this process to be smoothed out, and additional features added.

As a long side note: I’m still not really clear on the legality in the US of this app. Sorry for getting too technical, but in the US, under the DMCA, the circumvention of an “access control” like those on encrypted digital files, is copyright infringement. There are provisions in the DMCA that allow for reverse engineering to allow for interoperability of computer programs with other programs. I’m not clear if what this program does is actually circumvention, as it would require the TiVo subscriber’s Media Access Key, but combined with those reverse engineering allowances, the legal argument may exist. However, the functionality this software provides should be limited to downloading TiVo recorded content to your own Mac or your other unsupported devices, and should only be used for non-commercial or other fair use activity, and not for spreading willy-nilly over the Internet. It’s your responsibility as to how you use (or misuse) a tool—whether physical or digital. You may have read from my staff bio, that at my day job, I’m knee deep in this stuff. There are a lot of places to find out more about these digital rights issues—because so many Mac users are digital consumers and digital creators, I would encourage you to find out more.

Just in the past few days, the digital protections (or DRM) in which TiVo wrapped its recorded programming were defeated to allow the content to be played on a consumer’s networked device of choice. And I’m sure I’m not the only member of the MacCast community who has been waiting for the TiVoToGo functionality, but I’m excited at the possibility of watching even more recorded content on the go.

What I find interesting is that in the few days since this hack was made available, some previously held DRM hostages are wishing they had never been freed. The Unofficial Apple Weblog posts their argument trying to explain that the this hack may be bad for Mac and TiVo users in the long run for two reasons : 1. that instead of spending time on offering additional and more flexible cross-platform features for its users, TiVo will spend the time repairing its now broken DRM; 2. that content providers and DRM approval committees like CableLABs will see this as a flaw with TiVo’s DRM and not provide TiVo content or certify its DVRs to receive protected content.

If you’ve listened to This Week in Tech or are active in these kinds of digital copyright debates, you may have heard these arguments before. They’re the same ones used as justification for passing the DMCA: copyright owners must have legal recourse against those who break the DRM that protects their works; if not, copyright owners will refuse to distribute their content online. Clearly podcasts, most of which are not-DRM’d, are proving that theory wrong every day. What’s new about this argument is to hear it from the same group of people who have been complaining about the limitations and restrictive characteristics of such DRM in the first place. Some Mac users who have been put-off by TiVoToGo are essentially asking for the restrictions to be put back in place. Perhaps we should call this psychological response the “digital Stockholm syndrome”?

What’s telling is that with this TiVoToGo hack, there’s little talk about piracy—moving the content off of the TiVo and distributing it all over the Internet. Maybe it’s because hacking the TiVo to extract recorded content was accomplished long ago, so those who really want to “pirate” TV weren’t stopped by this DRM in the first place. Instead, the discussions are mostly about enabling Mac users to watch more content on their MacBooks or iPods, just like PC users have been able to do via TiVoToGo for a long time now.

Even though the studios are trying to put the screws to Apple to make FairPlay even more restrictive, to me at least, it’s clear by this TiVo hack story that all Mac users want is to be able to watch more of the their legally obtained content on their device of choice.

Recently my brother was in a lecture at his University, and had to get up and go to the bathroom. To feel comfortable leaving his Mac unattended, he uses iAlertU, a nice little security application from Slapping Turtle that turns your MacBook’s speakers, iSight camera, motion sensors and screen into an alarm system capable of locking up the computer. It even takes a snapshot of the would-be thief and makes a noisy racket with a car-alarm like response, even if it’s just moved, let alone used.

Once the program is open, all you have to do is hold down the Menu button on your Apple remote to activate/de-activate your alarm. Of course, you should have your MacBook (Pro) paired with your remote for this purpose, otherwise anyone could ‘disarm’ your security system easily.

And it was when he was ‘arming’ iAlertU that he discovered something, much to the chagrin of other MacBook users in the hall below him: almost no one pairs their remotes with their MacBooks. Imagine the look on those in the hall as Front Row mystically opened on their screens.

It’s not just for occasions like this that you should pair your Apple Remote with your iMac, Mac Mini, or MacBook (Pro). As more and more mac users switch to Intel Macs as I have, they’ll find out they have to pair the remotes for each system to prevent synchronized Front-Rowing, and iPod Universal Dock magic.

At our house, we have an Intel iMac, and two MacBooks, and one universal dock in our bedroom. The MacBooks roam about the house, but they come to sleep with us in the bedroom at our desks.

With so many Macs, we’d have mayhem if we didn’t have each system paired with their respective remote. If you’re facing the same situation, here’s how you can both pair your remotes with your Macs, and pair a remote with a Universal Dock.

Adapted from Apple.com: Pairing With Your Mac

1.) Invade your Mac’s personal space by getting up close to it (about 3 or 4 inches away).
2.) Point the remote at the Apple logo on the front of your iMac.
3.) Press and hold the Menu and Next/Fast-forward buttons simultaneously on the remote for 5 seconds.

Your Apple Remote is now paired with your computer. You can tell the remote is paired because you will see a chain-link style lock.

To delete a pairing between the remote and your iMac, open System Preferences, click Security, and then click Unpair in the Security pane. (You may have to enter your Administrator password to make changes in the Security pane.)

Turning off infrared reception

You can use the Security pane in System Preferences to turn the infrared (“IR”) reception on your Mac off (or back on). To do this:

1.) From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences.
2.) Click Security to display the pane.
3.) Select the “Disable remote control infrared receiver” check-box.

Adapted from Apple.com: Pairing With Your iPod Universal Dock:

1.) Make sure other products that are compatible with the remote are powered off.
2.) Connect the dock to your computer or to an electrical outlet.
3.) Put an iPod in the dock and turn the iPod on.
4.) Point the remote at the front of the dock.
5.) Press and hold the Menu and Next/Fast-Forward buttons together for about six seconds. There is no visible feedback to indicate the pairing is complete.

To reset the dock to work with all remotes:

1.) Make sure other products that are compatible with the remote are powered off.
2.) Connect the dock to your computer or to an electrical outlet.
3.) Put an iPod in the dock and turn the iPod on.
4.) Point the remote at the front of the dock.
5.) Press and hold the Menu and Previous/Rewind buttons together for about six seconds.

While its not going to make a big difference in your day-to-day Mac experience, pairing your Apple Remote(s) ensures that annoying accidents don’t happen- or as with our unwitting students, you don’t think that your Mac has been magically possessed and suddenly has a hankering to play background music along with your professor’s lecture.

In this article we will emulate the most basic elements of the GUI of OS X Tiger. This means ditching the default Luna visual style that is reminiscent of Fisher Price Toys. Please keep in mind that this is only the first step, so not all the features of Tiger’s GUI will carry over quite yet. Please also note that it is possible to use the built in “Visual Style” feature to make your machine look like a Mac with a dll hack. But doing so will only skin the buttons, scroll bars, and the taskbar. For that reason we will not cover that in this article, but for more information on hacking the uxtheme.dll file in Windows XP take a look at this article on Neowin.net.

WindowBlinds ($19.95)

This is the safest and most user friendly method of changing the GUI on your Windows machine. No system files are altered and there is little to no slowdown. There is a freeware version you can try first, but most the features require you purchase the full version. If you’re running this on Apple hardware you will meet the system requirements so there is nothing to worry about. The install is as simple as any other Windows application and even comes with a few visual styles built in.

Once you have that installed, you have a choice of which Tiger visual style you want to download. There is a plethora of them out there, but two of them stand out amongst the crowd. Both are well developed and have multiple options to change the color schemes within the theme. I suggest you take a thorough look at the screenshots for each style before reading on, and that you give them both a shot to see which suits your needs best. When trying each visual style take a good look at the information in the included read-me files as many common questions are answered in them.

Steve Grenier’s Tiger Theme

This is probably the most popular Tiger theme because of all the sub-styles it includes. The buttons on application windows are located left side and the look is emulated almost perfectly. Shadows, spotlight and the menu bar are noticeably missing, but all will be featured in future articles. The button on the top right rolls the window up to take less space while working with multiple applications. After using this for a few hours you may find it painful to be without while using Windows. As with all WindowBlinds themes it is recommended you restart your computer after applying it to avoid problems.

KoL’s Tiger 2 Theme

This theme is less popular as it does not include many sub-styles, however it is widely accepted as the most accurate theme. Outside of the lack of sub-styles this theme includes all the features of Grenier’s take on Tiger. KoL has also managed to create a theme that has a more sharp and responsive feel than most other themes. The seemingly small tweaks like the shut down menu and the more accurate scroll bars make a world of difference in your daily use. If you don’t mind only having a blue and a graphite theme then this is without a doubt the right choice.

The last thing you want to do after applying the theme is move your task bar to the top of your desktop. Right click on the taskbar and make sure “Lock the taskbar” is unchecked. Then drag and drop the taskbar to the top of the screen, and lock it down again. After this you will have completed the first step in emulating the OS X environment. In our next article we will discuss a few applications that emulate the “Dock” and where to get the best looking icons for your applications.

You know all about surfing the web. You’re a power-surfer! You keep in touch with your favorite websites every day. You open links in new background tabs to maximize your time and screen real estate. But do you know about RSS? This post is a quick glimpse at how you can keep up with your favorite websites far more efficiently, all within Mac OS X’s built in browser, Safari 2.0.

What is RSS?

Depending on who you talk to, RSS can stand for “Rich Site Summary” or “Really Simple Syndication,” and I think both help to describe what RSS does—respectively from two different perspectives: readers and publishers.

You might think of it as a ticker-tape of the latest headlines and summaries from a specific source, or even groups of sources. RSS is simply a feed of published information, formatted in a way that web-browser-like applications called “news aggregators” or “RSS readers” can understand. Users subscribe to RSS feeds in these news aggregators, and periodically, the aggregator will go out and check for any new updates, to find the latest news from each subscribed feed.

RSS feeds can generally encapsulate any information a web browser can handle. Bloggers use RSS feeds to syndicate their latest blog posts. If you became a fan of the MacCast podcast before reading this blog, you may have been using RSS without even knowing it—as the MacCast podcasts are delivered to your iTunes (or other aggregator) via RSS feeds.

Give It a Try

So, maybe you’ve heard of RSS but were shy to start using them, or just plain didn’t know how. Don’t be, it’s as easy as saving a bookmark. Let’s give it a try.

Maybe you’re reading this post from Safari. That’s great, because Apple has done a great job of easily allowing users who are new to RSS to get their feet wet. Assuming you’re running Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, you’re at least using Safari 2.0, which has an RSS aggregator built in. From this post, look up at the right corner of the address bar, and you should see a blue button with “RSS” written in it. Before you click it, remember, to get back to this post, just click the back button or click on the “RSS” again. Okay, click it (but please come back for the rest of the story)!

By doing so, Safari transforms from its regular webpage view into an RSS reader. Down drops a summary view of the MacCast blog posts. At the top in the blue bar, on the left you should see the name of the RSS feed, and on the right how many posts are listed. On the right side you can search within the RSS feed’s articles, shorten or lengthen how much of each post is displayed, sort the posts in a number of ways (I’d recommend clicking on “New” instead of the default “Date”), quickly skip to recent articles, see the source of the RSS feed(s) is/are being displayed (more on that later), and some options for sending the RSS feed to someone else, or adding it as a bookmark. Remember, anytime you come across a webpage with that RSS button, that means the page has an RSS feed and you can view the page in the Feed view.

Fine Tuning

That’s all fine and good, but really, surfing to pages just to view them as aggregated posts isn’t what RSS is all about. Let’s look at the Safari Preferences (in the Safari menu or using “Cmd-,”) and click the RSS icon to dig deeper into the options.

First off, for now, we’ll keep Safari as your default RSS reader. The next option talks about which RSS feeds you want updated often—for beginners, lets check the Bookmarks Bar, and check for updates every hour. If you wish, you can pick a color for newly updated feed posts, which should change after you’ve viewed them. Lastly, you can pick a time when the posts expire and drop out of your long list of posts. Personally, I prefer a shorter amount of time—posts tend to add up and can make a little browsing a bit sluggish. You can always “flush” them all by clicking the “remove all” button.

Groups of Feeds

Just like you might have groups of bookmarks in Safari, RSS feeds are very useful when you group them in folders. The most useful is creating folders in your Bookmarks Bar, which lets you see at a glance if any number of feeds have been updated and how many posts are in each folder.

First, lets create a folder in your Bookmarks Bar by clicking on the little Bookmarks icon in leftmost part of Safari’s Bookmarks Bar. This shows all your bookmarks. In the Collections column, select Bookmarks Bar, and then click the little “+” button at the bottom of the right pane to add a folder. You might name it “Mac News”, because in this example we’re going to populate it with some Mac related RSS feeds. Click the Bookmarks icon again to go back to the regular webbrowser. You should now see the Mac News folder in your Bookmarks Bar, with a little drop-down arrow that will eventually list your feeds.

You can add new feeds to this folder in the same way you add bookmarks to a folder. To get things going, here are a list of feeds I currently have in my Mac News Folder:

feed://www.maccast.com/feed/
feed://macncell.com/index_html/atom.xml
feed://www.appleinsider.com/appleinsider.rss
feed://www.freemacblog.com/feed/
feed://www.oreillynet.com/pub/feed/3?format=rss2
feed://www.macrumors.com/macrumors.xml
feed://feeds.macworld.com/macworld/all
feed://feeds.feedburner.com/ThePhillRyuBlog
feed://www.tuaw.com/rss.xml
feed://www.thinksecret.com/rss.xml

Note: If you want to add some or all of these to your Mac News folder, highlight all the text above with your cursor, then click and drag the highlighted text onto your Mac News folder. You should see the little “green plus ball”, then just let go and all the feeds should be in there. Don’t worry about what their names are—that will fill in after the first time Safari updates them.

To see all the feeds aggregated on one screen, click on the Mac News folder and select “View All RSS Articles.” Depending on which setting you selected in preferences, you should start having new updates in about an hour.

Feed Me

Now that you know how to add feeds, you might start wanting to check your regularly viewed websites for their feeds. As noted above, feeds are a great way to keep up with blogs and podcasts (if you don’t like iTunes).

Of course, one feed you should subscribe to right off the bat is the MacCast blog

One of my favorite applications of RSS feeds is Craigslist. Any search you conduct in Craigslist can be saved as an RSS feed. Maybe, like me, you’re looking for a vintage BMW 2002 from the ’70s. If you live in Washington, DC like me, you might subscribe to this feed which was simply generated by a search on Craigslist, and whenever a car that fits your query is posted, you’ll know about it—and much faster than someone who’s just casually searching. I think I just ruined my chances of finding a 2002 around here now. Oops!

There are tons of applications for RSS feeds. Do you have a good one or seventeen? If so, leave a comment and let us all know.

I’m a proud owner of both an Intel iMac and MacBook, while my girlfriend is still quite fond of her iBook G4 12″, and plans on keeping it for awhile. I previously owned a 14″ iBook, and when the Intel iMac arrived, one of the first questions I had was “Can I boot both PPC and Intel machines from a multiple-partition drive?”

I was wondering if I could still use the external drive which had multiple partitions and served as my backup drive. I use SuperDuper!, and would make regular backups to the drive from the 3 PPC machines we had.

When I sold my G4 Mac Mini in favor of an upgrade to an Intel-based iMac, it ushered not only my first desktop Mac into the house, but also a new puzzle: Intel Macs use the newer GUID partitioning format, which is built upon Intel’s EFI subsystem. PPC Macs use the older Apple Partition Map (APM) format.

A new persistent hiccup in my weekly backups followed. Uh-oh.

Originally intended to replace the aging and unloved Basic Input Output System (BIOS), EFI now heads up the boot procedure of the new Macs, taking over from Open Firmware in PowerPC-based Macs.

So wait- let me check… can I boot the Intel Mac from a PPC formatted backup?

I did some quick research, and the answer came back cloudy: No you can’t… well, sort of, yes. But really, no. Apple doesn’t want you to, it seems.

Huh?

I’m sure you’re a bit confused, as I was. But not to worry, because I’m about to walk you through the easiest, fastest, and surefire way to backup both a PPC Mac and an Intel Mac to a single drive with multiple partitions that will boot accordingly to both types- and the best part is that you’ll never have to wade through the terminal, or advanced features of Apple’s Disk Utility as others would have you believe.

Solutions for creating a Universal architectural deployment of Mac OS X won’t be available until 10.5 Leopard. When it arrives, users will be able to boot a external installation of Mac Os X on either architecture. Enterprise IT specialists have found a way using a variety of tools to create a Universal 10.4, but for the average user it’s not necessary to compile such a solution.

So let’s get started.

A One-Way Street

Since Intel Macs use the GUID partition format, and PPC Macs use the APM partition format, building your dual backup external drive is a one-way street: It must be partitioned using APM, and you’ll be using both the PPC and the Intel backups with the APM formatted drive.

I know what you’re thinking: “I thought Intel Macs couldn’t boot from APM drives…”

They can’t, if the installation of OS X on the APM partition is PowerPC-based. But they can, if it’s Intel.

The Mac OS X Installation Disc 10.4.6 included with new Intel iMacs, Mac Minis, MacBooks and MacBook Pros was actually formatted using APM. So despite the confusion about the two different architectures, the different partition formats, and the different boot firmware, there is enough in common among the PPC and Intel systems to make ourselves a nice bootable external drive that we can use to backup both our PowerPC and Intel-based Macintoshes.

First, using a PPC-based Mac we’ll partition our external drive using Disc Utility (Applications/Utilities/Disc Utility). Open Disk Utility, and plug in your external FireWire drive. Wait for it to appear in the left pane within Disk Utility. If this is the first time you’ve used the drive, it may need to be initialized.

When it appears, select the drive, and then select the partition tab within the Disk Utility. Select the volume scheme drop-down, and choose ’2 partitions’.

Select the first partition, and call it whatever you like, same with the second.

In my example I’ll name one partition ‘PPC’, and the other ‘Intel’.

Select Mac OS X Extended (Journalled) as the format, and adjust the partition sizes accordingly using the slider.

When ready, select the partition button, and your external disk will be formatted.

Now, once the drive is formatted, close Disc utility, and close all your open programs, saving your work. Next, open SuperDuper! and backup your drive in it’s entirety to the partition called ‘PPC’ (or whatever you called it). When it’s complete, eject your external drive and plug it into your Intel-based Mac.

Open SuperDuper! on your Intel Mac, and do a full backup to the partition called ‘Intel’ (or whatever you called it).

That’s it, you’re done! You now have a drive that can boot the PPC partitioned backups for your PPC computers, and your Intel backups to your Intel-based Macs.

*Important notes: Firstly, you cannot boot the PPC partition on the Intel Mac, or vice versa. Secondly, make sure you’ve installed the most recent Universal version of SuperDuper! on both computers before attempting this.

This method has been personally tested and verified to work with SuperDuper!. I have not tested CarbonCopyCloner, as it is not yet a universal binary application.

I’ve had a number of friends recently switch to Mac. They may have known how to use their Windows PCs well enough, but they weren’t what some may call “power users.” Having switched to the Mac, they’re finding themselves actually enjoying the use of their new computer, and wanting to know more. One of the first things I show them is some simple tips for browsing the web with Mac OS X’s built-in browser, Safari.

In our last Back to Basics, we explored how adding contacts to Address Book can add additional functionality to Safari.

This time, let’s look at some more basic features of the modern browsers that can dramatically improve your every day browsing.

Keyboard Controls

Using a mouse or track-pad is great, but sometimes there’s just no substitute for the good ole’ keyboard. Let’s look at the basic keyboard commands for simple browsing (note: there’s sometimes multiple ways to pull off a function):

New Browser Window: Command-N

Close Browser Window: Command-W

Back: Command-[ or Command-Option-left arrow key

Forward: Command-] or Command-Option-right arrow key

Reload Page: Command-R

Stop Page Load: Command-.

Skip to Next Link: Option-Tab

Skip to Previous Link: Option-Shift-Tab

Add a Bookmark: Command-D

Show Downloads Window: Command-Option-L

Increase / Decrease Font Size: Command-‘+’ / Command-‘-’ (without the quotes)

Skip between Address Bar, Search Box, and Webpage Fields: Tab

Tabs

Get ready, you’re about to enter the world of the power-user. Don’t worry, it won’t hurt a bit!

Thanks to Flickr user WordRidden for this image and the CC license

If you’re an avid web surfer (we still use that term, “surfer”, right?), you may find yourself with loads of open windows for different websites you’ve browsed to. Here’s a common scenario: you’re browsing a webpage that has some links you’re going to want to visit after you’re done reading the whole page. I don’t know about you, but what I used to do was right-click on the link, select “Open in new window” for each link, and then I’d have all these windows piled up. There’s a much more efficient way to keep your open websites organized, and that’s with tabs.

But much like the one-button mouse, Apple thinks life is simpler without tabs, by default in Safari, so, you’re going to have to enable them in the Safari Preferences (found either under the Safari menu or Command-,). Click on the aptly named “Tabs” icon, and you’ll see a few options and some helpful tips. First, check the first box to enable tabs. The second check box asks allows you to change focus to the new tab (until you get used to tabs, I’d leave this one unchecked for now). The third check box is a cosmetic issue—whether you want Safari to display tabs in a browser window all the time, or just when you have opened multiple tabs (if you’re running on an older or slower Mac, you may want to keep tabs shown all the time, because the animation that’s generated creating a tab can be painfully slow). Below all that, you get a number of helpful hints (btw—“click” just means the click of a mouse on a link on a webpage):

• Command-click: open a link in a new tab, while keeping the focus on the current webpage.

• Command-Shift-click: opens a link in a new tab and movesthe focus on that new tab.

• Command-Option-click: opens a link in a new window, while keeping the focus on the current webpage.

• Command-Option-Shift-click: opens a link in a new window and moves the focus to that new window.

Note: if in the Tabs preferences, you checked the second box, the above options will be different.

So, maybe you’re doing some research on your favorite Wikipedia article. As you read, you see links for other webpages that you know you’re going to want to browse to, but you’re not done reading this page yet. Even if you have the fastest ‘net connection, links sometimes take time to load, so you might as well start them a’loadin’ now. Just Command-click on the desired links, and you’ll see pertinent tabs with those pages popup next consecutively. When you’re ready, you can move over to those other tabs by clicking on them.

The webpage you loaded in that tab no good? Click on the little circle with an “X” in it.

Tab Keyboard Controls

Using the mouse can slow your newly-found tab efficiency. Keep those fingers on the keyboard! Sorry, those of you on desktops, you don’t have much of a choice, I guess. Anywho, here are some quick key commands:

New Tab: Command-T

Next Tab Right: Command-Shift-] or Command-Shift-right arrow key

Next Tab Left: Command-Shift-[ or Command-Shift-left arrow key

Close Current Tab: Command-W (when you have a browser window with only one tab, Command-W will close the whole browser window).

Upcoming Features

Tabs not dynamic enough for you? Want to reorder them? Want to split them into new windows or regroup them into one window? Want some of that lick-your-screen aqua animation goodness that Apple spoils us with?

Apparently, these features will be coming to a Safari browser near you soon with the next version of Mac OS X Leopard and Safari 3.0, at least according to some who are running developer copies of 10.5. You can see what I mean here. Check this out while you can—I’m not sure how long this preview will last as the video has already been taken down from YouTube.

Wrap-up

Well, this post got kinda lengthy, so I’m going to split these Safari browsing tips into at least two parts. Next up, RSS.

A little bit of information can go a long way—this is especially the case in Mac OS X. As you may have read in my previous two posts in this series (1 | 2), taking some time with your Mac’s built-in Address Book app can pay off in spades in functionality in other applications. Last time we looked at Mail app, this time, we’ll take a quick look at a few native and 3rd-party OS X apps.

Browsers

Didn’t think that your web browser would bother looking up information from your contacts? Think again. There are at least two web browsers made for OS X that will allow you to look up a contact’s website, without even launching Address Book.

Safari

Depending on the way you’ve setup Safari, you may already have Addresses available on your Bookmarks Bar. If not, open your Safari’s Preferences from the Safari menu (or “Command-,”), select the Bookmarks icon, and check the first box labeled “Include Address Book”. You might also want to enable this in the Bookmarks Menu, just below.

Now in Safari, you should see a Address Book bookmark button, that drops down to list contacts with URLs added to their contact information from Address Book.

If you click on the little book icon, to show all bookmarks, in the Collections column, you’ll also find the Address Book collection, which lists the contact and URL, with a convenient search box at the bottom (which allows you to search all your bookmarks or only the Address Book).

Camino

Camino (which is currently my browser of choice), won’t add an Address Book bookmark in the main window like Safari, however if you select the show/hide Bookmark button, you’ll see a similar Collections list in the left column, where you’ll find the Address Book. Extra Keyword and Description fields can be added to each bookmark here as well.

Instant Messengers

Associating contacts with their AIM “handle” or any other instant messaging service user account really comes in handy. Not only can these apps automatically replace the non-descriptive username with the person’s real name or nickname, but you can do some other neat tricks as well.

iChat & Adium

Both iChat and Adium handle contacts really well. Both can group a contact’s different IM accounts and display him or her as one “avatar.” The contact can either take on the mugshot you’ve assigned to it in Address Book, or you can allow the contact to provide his or her own icon:

In iChat, from the Buddy list, if you’d like to over-ride the contacts icon, you have to select the person from the list, Get Info with “Command-i”, and then check the appropriate check box to force iChat to use your mugshots from Address Book. If that contact is not already associated with a contact in your AB, use the “Choose Address Card…” button to associate that user with a contact.

In Adium this is done in the Preferences (from the Adium menu or “Command-,”), select Advanced, and then Address Book. Here you’ll find the different options for Adium to pull info from your Address Book — which icon to use, the contact’s name (you can choose full name to include middle name or a nickname), and whether you want to combine contacts on a single card.

Another neat feature you may not know about is that you can IM mobile phones if you have an AOL or .Mac account and you’re in the US (I’m not sure if this works outside the US—if it does, please leave a comment). It’s really not an IM, rather, AOL will relay the message through an SMS gateway to a selected mobile phone. You can do this manually in both iChat and Adium, but since we’re talking about integrating Address Book with these apps, it makes more sense to first add the pertinent info in AB.

So, in Address Book, find a contact who you might want to send a mobile phone SMS message to. Select them, and click the Edit button at the bottom of the screen. In the instant messenger accounts section, add a new one by clicking the green circle with a “+” in it, and then add the person’s mobile phone number, with area code but with no dashes or spaces, and at the beginning, add a “+1” without the quotes. For example, if I wanted to add the number: “202-555-1212”, I’d enter “+12025151212”, again, without the quotes. Make sure you’ve also made this an AIM account, or else it won’t work. It perhaps goes without saying, but the number you enter must be a mobile phone number, as regular phones typically can’t receive SMS messages. Also, although this won’t cost you anything, it may cost the person you send a message to—so be kind because the cost of chatting over SMS can add up.

After you do this, in iChat, if the person is not online via IM, but you have entered their mobile number, you’ll see “Mobile” listed under their user account in the status area. Just click on their name to send them a message via SMS.

In Adium, depending on how you have your Contact List setup, if the person is not online but you have entered their mobile number, you’ll see a little WiFi / wireless symbol next to their name. If you hover over the name, you’ll also be able to see what instant message services are available with that person and which ones are online. Just click on the name to send a message via SMS.

When the window pops, enter your message. After the first message you enter, immediately after you should receive a message from the AOL SMS gateway server that reads:

Your IM has been sent to my mobile device. When I receive it, I will be able to reply. Thanks for your IM! Want your IMs forwarded to your phone? Click here.

If you don’t see that message immediately, you aren’t setup correctly. Check back in Address Book to see if the number is formatted correctly and that it’s using the AIM account. Make sure you’re logged-in to your AOL or AIM account.

iCal

This one is pretty straight-forward, but is often missed. If you’ve added friends’ birthdays in Address Book, a check of a box will help you remember them iCal.

Select Preferences from the iCal menu (or “Command-,”), click the General icon, check the box labeled “Show Birthdays calendar,” and then close the window. Now you should see a read-only calendar in the color red appropriately named “Birthdays”.

Read-only? What the?! Yeah, I know, how lame! In the latest version of iCal (ver. 2.0.4 in Mac OS X 10.4.8 Tiger), AB to iCal is a one-way street. This means that out of the box, you can’t have iCal alert you of someone’s birthday ahead of time, like you can with other iCal events. But just because Apple doesn’t provide the functionality, doesn’t mean 3rd party apps can’t. I’m not going to cover them here, but here are two options that may help: Dates to iCal and iCalFix.

Synchronizing Devices

As you may know, I run a site called MacnCell.com which tries to help Mac users get their mobile phones in step with their Apple laptop or desktop. On MacnCell.com, I try to let people know about different apps that do the job. iSync is OS X’s built-in application that helps accomplish this, but it’s not the only one out there.

iSync

iSync is Apple’s built in application that coordinates the synchronization of your AB contacts and iCal events with a number of your mobile devices and online services.

You may have tons of contacts added to AB, or maybe of the few you have, there are some that you don’t want taking up precious space on your mobile phone. It makes a lot of sense to create a Group in AB for just those contacts you want on your mobile phone. Once you do that, in the settings for your mobile phone, you can tell iSync which Group you want sync’d to it.

Each phone is different as to what bits of contact and event information it will store.

Although it tries, Apple can’t support every mobile phone out there, so there are some other niche apps that pickup where iSync leaves off. These apps allow you to synchronize the data you’ve got in Address Book and iCal with your native-Apple-unsupported mobile devices.

Mark/Space offers MissingSync which can help you to keep your Palm, Windows Mobile device, PSP, and even your Macs in synchronized.

PocketMac provides similar synchronization capabilities for PocketPCs, Blackberry / RIM devices, PSP, and even the iPod.

DataPilot also provides synchronizing software for lots of mobile phones that go unsupported by Apple.

There are other apps that support other phones. If your mobile device is not supported yet by iSync or one of the above apps, you might have a look on the Sync-Apps page of MacnCell.com where I try to keep an updated list of which app supports what mobile phone.

Wrap Up

That’s it for now. If you have any more apps that share this kind of information between them, please spread your wealth of knowledge by leaving a comment below.

An important aspect of learning to drive is knowing and understanding the signs and symbols we see when on the road. Your operating system also has many signs and symbols. The more you understand and can read those signs the better driver you will become. This a series will offer you quick little “driving” tips for OS X. In each lesson I will take a quick look at just one element of OS X and give you a little lesson in maximizing it’s functionality.

Traffic Lights

Being OS X users we are all familiar with OS Xs traffic signal. You know, those little red, yellow and green “lights” at the top left of each window? You are probably familiar with the basic functionality of these buttons. But these little guys are more tricked out than you would think.

Red means stop

You probably already know that clicking the red button on your window will close it. You many also know that holding down the ‘Option’ key while clicking the red button will close all the windows, but there is one more trick up reds sleeve. The “red light” also provides a bit of info that I find extremely helpful. Just like it’s real life counterpart it lets you know when to stop. It alerts you when it might be time to stop and save your file. In many applications if you notice a little black circle inside the red button it is the OSes way of letting you know you are between saves. Once you save your file the black dot will disappear and then come back when you make your next change.

One of the real strengths of OS X is how information given to one app is be pulled into another automatically. This post will build on the previous one, showing how another apps that come with Mac OS X, in this case Mail, can use all the contact information you’ve already painstakingly added to Address Book. Let’s have a look, shall we?

Mail Setup

I’d prefer to keep these basic tutorials out of the “how to setup” weeds, and try to show you how to leverage the information in one app in many others. So, if you’d like to know the basics of the Mail app, Apple’s own Mac 101 support page for Mail does a good job of explaining the basic features and how to setup your mail accounts.

Address Book Images

One nice thing, right off the bat, that you’ll notice in Mail is that if you’ve saved any mug-shots into Address Book, they’ll automatically show up in your email message listings. This can be a useful way of figuring out who an email is from at a glance.

Sending Emails to Groups

This is probably the most straight-forward use of Address Book (AB) Groups—that is, group emails. Assuming you’ve already established groups in Address Book, when you’re creating a new message in Mail, all you have to do is start typing the name of the group, and Mail will use predictive typing to figure out who you’re intended email is for.

If you don’t remember the name of the Group in AB, just click on the little Address Book button, and up pops an AB dialog that allows you to choose the groups or individual contacts.

Adding Contacts via Mail

Another way Mail and Address Book cooperate is the “Add to Address Book” feature in Mail.

In the individual message window of any email, any of the header (the To: From: CC: Subject: Date: area at the top of the message body) email addresses can be added. Use the mouse pointer to hover over a name or address, click the little triangle at the end of the name, and a option list will appear. Select “Add to Address Book” and AB will do as it’s told (though I’ve found for some reason, AB will either silently add the contact, and sometimes it will pop up to allow you to edit the contact you’ve just added). You can then search and find the contact in AB and add it to your group(s) of choice.

If there are multiple emails from which you’d like to gather addresses, select the messages, and in the Message menu select “Add Senders to Address Book” (or select Cmd-Y).

iChat from Mail

Contacts enables you to use yet another Mac OS X App, iChat, easily through Mail. If you’ve assigned instant message names to contacts in AB, and you have iChat launched, you can see their status in Mail (note the green, yellow and red translucent dots next to their names).

Double clicking on the dot launches a new message window for that contact in iChat. This comes in handy when sending an email isn’t instant-enough-gratification, or you need a response instantly.

Sorting

I don’t know about you, but I get hundreds of emails a day. My ability to sort and prioritize emails based on a number of different criteria is essential in keeping me productive (and sane), and I’ve found Mail more than up-to-the-task for managing email whether it’s for work or pleasure. The key to this is using Mail’s built in Rules and Smart Mailboxes.

It can be confusing to distinguish how Rules work differently from Smart Mailboxes. Here’s how I distinguish the two:

• Rules: can be used move emails as you receive them—from your Inbox and into other folders for sorting or archiving. Rules can also be applied manually to emails after they’ve been downloaded from your mail server.

• Smart Mailboxes: can be used more like Smart Playlists in iTunes and Smart Groups in Address Book, when you want to have a list of dynamically updated messages that fit a certain criteria. On their own, Smart Mailboxes don’t move emails around, instead they are constantly updated searches based on the criteria you assign them.

I’ll leave the strategy of how you sort your emails to you, but here are some examples of how you can use the groups in Address Book to manage the email onslaught.

Moving and sorting mail out of the Inbox:

Say you want to get messages out of your Inbox and automatically archived into mailbox folders. In this case, lets make a rule to move emails from friends and family into a local mailbox folder on my Mac.

First, you should already have “Friends and Family” as a Group or Smart Group in your AB. In Mail, you’ll want to create a Mailbox from either the Mailbox menu or the plus button at the bottom of the folder / Mailbox listing. I’ll call it “Friends and Family.”

Next, to move messages around, we’ll use Rules which can be found in Mail Preferences (in the Mail menu, or pressing Cmd-,). From there, select the Rules icon, and then the Add Rule button.

You’ll now see a Rules dialog box, which allows you to name the rule and assign it a sorting criteria. Once again, I’m going to call the rule “Friends and Family.” I only have one condition to base my criteria on, so I’ll just leave the first selection box to “any.” In the first drop down menu in the first criteria, I’m going to select “Sender is a member of a Group” and then select the “Friends and Family” group. Then, in the “Perform the following actions” area, I’ll select “Move Message” to mailbox “Friends and Family” and then click the OK button.

Once that’s done, it will be added to the Rules list. Note that the Rules can be dragged and dropped into different orders, which might come in handy when you have a number of rules, but you want email messages to jump through one criteria before another. After your done with the Rule, so long as you’ve checked the Active box in the list, the next time you check your email, the rules will be applied to incoming email. If you want to apply Rules to email you’ve already downloaded from your server, select the desired mailbox, select all the messages in that mailbox from the Edit menu (or with Cmd-A) and then from the Message menu, select Apply Rules (or Cmd-Option-L), and the messages will sort.

Keeping work and play separate:

Maybe you want to see the most recent messages from your work colleagues as well as your friends. Smart Mailboxes make this easy. First, you should have separate AB Groups or Smart Groups for both Friends and Work-related contacts. Next, in Mail, from the Mailbox menu, select “New Smart Mailbox…” or click the little gear button at the bottom of the folder / Mailbox listing and select “New Smart Mailbox…”

The Smart Mailbox dialog that drops down will look familiar from other “Smart” searches in OS X. First, name the Smart Mailbox, for the first one I’ll call it “Work.” For the first drop down box, I’m going to select “all,” as I’ll have multiple search criteria. In the first criteria drop down list, I’ll select “Sender is a Member of a Group” and in the next I’ll select that Group from AB. Then I’ll add another criteria by clicking the “+” button and then from the first drop down list, I’ll select “Date Received” and in the second, I’ll select “is this week.” Then click the OK button. When done, click on your new “Work” Smart Mailbox and you should find all the messages in your system from your work colleagues over the past two weeks. Once a message falls out of that time criteria, it will no longer show up in that folder. The same can be accomplished for friends emails by choosing that group from AB instead.

If you want to edit or modify the Smart Mailbox, simply right click or control click on it, and select “Edit Smart Mailbox…”

Wrap-up

Hopefully, that gives you some ideas of how to leverage your Address Book contacts with Mail. Check back next time for another look at how the Mac’s sharing of information between apps can help you work better.

If you’re a Mac switcher from either Windows or Linux like I was a few years ago, one of the first applications you’ll want to get to know is Address Book. The sooner you import your contacts into Mac OS X’s Address Book, the sooner you’ll appreciate how a little bit of data like your contacts transform and compliment the Mac’s usability in other applications. Let’s take a look…

Exporting Existing Contacts from your PIM

So, let’s start with the Address Book. If you’re coming from Linux and you’re using apps like Evolution or Kontact, you’re in luck because exporting contacts should be fairly simple. Just select all your contacts, and in the File menu, select “Save as VCard…” After transferring the resulting file ending in .vcf to your Mac, open Address Book and in the File menu, select “Import vCards” and that should be it.

If you’re coming from Outlook from Windows, there is a lengthy but free way and a painless but inexpensive way. I’m going to take the easy way out and go with O2M by Little Machines. Just download it on your Windows PC, run it and follow the directions. When you’re done, you’ll too have a vCard to import into Address Book. Unless you like spending time tinkering, it’s probably more worth your time to pay the $10 to O2M and get the job done.

Lastly, if you were clever enough to use the cross-platform Thunderbird to store your contacts on whatever OS, you too can simply export selected contacts to an .ldif file, which is a format that Address Book will understand and import.

Whew, the hard part is over, now let’s have some fun!

Contact Mug Shots

One of the fun things you can do with Address Book is add photos to your contacts. It sounds trivial, but after you’ve done it (and it’s easy to do), it’s one of those features that makes you want to keep using your Mac. And it’s not because you’re going to be hanging out in your Address Book, but because the information that you store in Address Book, like a simple contact picture, is used by other applications like Mail and iChat.

You may already have images of your friends on your PC or Mac. For contacts you don’t have photos of, you can use pretty much any image you’d like. Google Image search can be very useful for people that might have an online presence, or if you’re looking to substitute your own face for George Clooney or Brad Pitt (however, the MacCast does not in any way condone the impersonation of celebrities).

To get the image added to the individual’s contact, in Address Book, select the contact, click edit, double click the gray square to the left of the contacts name which pops up a little image re-sizer window. Either drag the image you want for that person into the window or click the “Choose…” button to find it, then move the image around so you have the part of the image within the square (which you can grow or shrink using the slider at the bottom). After you’re done, click “Set” and viola, you’ve added a lot more personality to your Address Book.

Adding more than the Default Info

You may quickly find that the default bits of information, or fields, that are listed for each contact in Address Book just don’t cut it. For instance, if a person has a web page, by default, you can’t add a URL to a contact. However, that’s easy to change. You can do it on a per-contact basis by selecting the card, then in the Card menu, select “Add Field…” and then select the field, like “URL” for adding a web page.

If you want to add more of the same fields already listed—say if someone has more than two phone numbers—while in edit mode, click the green “+” button by the desired field, select what the new field will be called—like “work fax”—or add your own by selecting “Custom” in the drop down list. Custom comes in very handy when you want to store a contacts relation that might not specifically be listed, like “cousin” or “milkman” or “fellow-Mac-fanatic.”

If you want to change the default fields for every contact, that’s easy to do as well. Go into Address Book’s preferences (found in the Address Book menu, or using the keyboard shortcut of Cmd-,), and select the Template icon. There you will see the default fields for each contact. To add a field, simply select the one(s) you want from the drop down “Add Field” menu. And just like above, if you want to add more of a certain field listed by default, click the green “+”, or if you want to eliminate a field by default, click the red “-“. When you close the Preferences window, you’ll find that the next contact you create will list those new fields.

Change Yourself

When you buy a new Mac, the first time you start Mac OS X, it will ask you for your name and user name, and even ask to select a user image from a bunch of fun icons pre-installed on the system. You may also note that the information you gave is stored in Address Book, in a special card called “My Card.” You can find My Card by selecting “Go to My Card” in the Card menu. It even has its own special icon in the names column and you should see a little “me” next to your image in the card itself.

If for some reason you want to change which contact is the “My Card” in Address Book, select the new contact and in the Card menu, select “Make This My Card.”

Sorting in Groups

Another useful customization of Address Book is place contacts into groups. Not only can this come in handy for when you’re trying to find a person in Address Book itself, but it can help with email distribution lists and sorting emails into folders in Mail, picking which contacts you’d like to synchronize with your PDA or mobile phone with iSync, and creating mailing labels in Pages, just to name a few. It’s as simple as dragging and dropping.

First, make sure you’re in “view card in column” view in Address Book. From there, if you don’t have any groups already, you’ll want to create one by clicking the “+” button at the bottom of the Group column. A useful one that I use is a group for “Friends.” Then from the Name column, simply drag contacts to the name of the group one by one. If you have lots of friends (let’s all hope!), select multiple by either selecting consecutive contacts by clicking the first and then the last while holding down the shift key, or non-consecutive contacts by holding down the command/Apple key when clicking on the individual contacts, then drag them to the group name.

Remember, you can drop a contact into any number of groups, for different lists of people you may want to create. If you want to know which contact is in what groups, select the “All” group in the Groups column, find and click on the contact in the Name column, and then press the alt/option on your keyboard, and you should see that contact’s groups highlight.

Groups don’t only have to be made of contacts; groups can also consist of a mix of contacts and groups. Meaning, you can have Groups build off of pre-existing groups. For instance, say you have a large family and been really diligent in Address Book and made groups for your sisters, brothers, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. But you’d like for there to be a group of all of your family. To accomplish this, just drag all those familial group onto a group called “Family,” and all of those individual contacts will pull in (even though they won’t display in Address Book)

I noted at the beginning of this post that the information you enter into Address Book will be accessible to other OS X applications. If you keep that in mind, it can help you to decide the different ways you might like to manipulate information you’ve added to contacts. For instance, knowing that I may want some contacts to synchronize to my phone and not others, I can make a “Mobile Phone” group and when the time comes, have iSync only mind those contacts. Same goes for Mail when creating distribution lists or message-sorting rules.

Searching and Smart Groups

Smart Groups are an easy way to dynamic lists or queries of information you’ve added to your contacts. This kind of list lets you do a lot of useful searches, like generate a group of friends with birthday’s in the next month, that perpetually updates. Find all the contacts that have a web page listed under their name, or an AIM address.

You can create these smart lists in a number of ways, but the easiest is simply to click on the button with the gear and select “New Smart Group…”. From there, you’ll get a smart group query builder, that allows you to select and combine (with the plus and minus buttons) different fields to customize your query. Once you’ve named it and clicked the “Okay” button, you’ll have your newly generated list ready to go.

Wrap-up

Address Book has a number of other great which we’ll get into at a later time. For now, hopefully all you switchers out there have a better lay of the land with Address Book. In the next Back to Basics, I’m going to talk about how you can use your Address Book to make Mail more functional.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for later topics to cover, please leave a comment below.

The used Mac market is at once vibrant, busy- and dangerous. As with any second-hand industry, there are awesome deals that make buying new seem downright crazy, and rip-offs that make you wish you’d paid the extra few hundred to ensure you got what you wanted.

Firstly, how do you discern a good deal from a bad one? Secondly, What are the tell-tale signs of legitimate sellers, and those of scammers? Lastly, what distinguishes a decent used purchase from a killer one?

These questions are important to answer when you set your sights on a used Mac purchase, and you’re in luck if you need help: This article will fine-tooth comb the process of finding, evaluating and buying your brand new (used) Macintosh.

Step 1: In The Zone

There are plenty of places to find used Macs. For some who live in urban centers, there may be local resellers that offer inflated used prices on Macs- but the truth is you can do better than buying used Macs at a reseller’s premium.

You’re better off to search on-line for your used Mac.

“Gasp! That’s dangerous, what if I get ripped off?”

The purpose of this Guide is to prevent that from happening. Yet if you’re going to be looking through the used market, you should know that there certainly are bad deals out there, and they’re waiting to happen for naive buyers with little experience.

Just because you’re going to be looking for this Mac on-line doesn’t mean that it won’t be local. On the contrary- local is just what you’re looking for in an on-line search. Who knows, maybe that guy above you in rm. 404 has a pretty G4 15″ Powerbook that you’d be glad to take off his hands.

Your search begins and ends at home, and for good reasons:

A) You will want to see the used Mac first-hand before committing to buy it.
B) You won’t have to pay duty, brokerage, and other erroneous fees.
C) You won’t be paying for shipping, or waiting for an unknown period of time for your Mac to arrive.

Step 2: Your Best-Before Date

The longer you give yourself to find the perfect used Mac, the more likely your chances of finding it.

Secondly, there are good and bad times to buy. When Apple releases new Macs, right afterwards there’s a small flood of used Macs available, as some users seek to upgrade to the latest models. As a result, the saturation & newer Macs lower the selling price in most cases.

Step 3: Dam The Cashflow

Now that you’ve given yourself time to find the right Mac, and you’re looking locally for it, you need to set your financial limit.

Some used sales look tempting, when sellers throw in bells and whistles for a little more. Here’s where you may get trapped: do you really need what they’re offering? You need to know exactly what you need for your Mac, and stick to finding just that.

Step 4: I’ll Take Mac Trivia for $500, Alex

Some listings are chalk full of details about your Mac in question, and others, well- leave a great deal to the hopeful imagination. You need to be armed with all the finer aspects of the model(s) you’re looking at, to make sure what’s listed- is what you get.

Here’s where a program like Mactracker is essential. Mactracker provides detailed information on every Apple Macintosh computer ever made, including items such as processor speed, memory, optical drives, graphic cards, supported OSes, and expansion options. Also included detailed info on Apple mice, keyboards, displays, printers, iPods, AirPort Base Stations & more.

It’s available for Windows, Mac OS X, OS9, and your iPod! So whether you’re a Mac newbie or a long-time user, you’ll be informed with all the nitty-gritties on your search.

Step 5: The Search- Auctions

You’ve set your distance, date and price limits, you know everything about the Mac(s) you’re interested in, and it’s time for the exciting part: Finding your new family member. You’re looking on-line for your Mac, but where, and what do you look for?

Obviously, there’s eBay. There’s also other on-line auction sites like eBid, Ubid, MightyBids, and Yahoo! Auctions. With any of these sites the rules for on-line auction buying of your used Mac remains the same:

1.) Stay Homely
No matter how good the deal may seem, no matter what the price, if you can’t physically see the computer so there’s no way to tell if it’s fraudulent or not. You need to be able to determine the condition of the computer, so local sellers who are willing to meet is what you’re looking for.

2.) Good Cop, Bad Cop
Even if lots of details are there in the listing, confirm with the seller what they’ve listed. Clarify any for yourself, asking: the condition of the exterior, # of owners, warranty, upgrade information (by who, when) the LCD condition (cracks, dead or stuck pixels, dark or light areas) and any other relevant information you consider important. In asking, you’ll quickly discover how knowledgeable the seller is about what they’re selling, and whether their communication with you is polite, honest, thorough, and clear- or not. And if not, you’re moving on.

3.) Includes
Do your best to find Macs that have all the original software, accessories, manuals, box etc. For one thing it shows you that the seller was interested in preserving it for resale, and probably takes care of the Mac. For another, you might need some or all of these things one day, and they’ll cost you an arm & a leg to replace.

3.) Ask For A Blind-Date
Some people clearly state they don’t do local pick-up, and other’s have to be courted. Some are very willing to do it, and those sellers are already in the good books, as it’s clear they are comfortable with a face-to-face transaction, and your ability to back out of the deal.

4.) Is It A Final Sale?
When sellers state this, they better have good reason. I once sold my used Mac with a final sale notice because it was still under warranty. I felt that if someone had issues with the laptop, they could address them with the warranty, and therefore I should not assume any responsibility. I ensured the full working and cosmetic condition of the laptop prior to sale. Make sure when a seller states this that you understand why- and if there are any exclusions, such as a Defective On Arrival (D.O.A) product.

5.) Ship’s Ahoy
Remember, because it’s a local sale, there’s no shipping fees. Don’t allow the seller to try and hook you into paying for shipping when you’re doing a local pick-up.

6.) Warranted?
If the Mac in question is still under warranty, ask for the serial number to verify. If so, you have the option to purchase Applecare for another 2 years, which may be a worthwhile investment considering you’re saving some cash in buying used. If it’s not under warranty, make sure to check with Mactracker to find out the exact age of the Mac you’re looking at.

7.) Stick To The Plan
Don’t overbid, or offer more than you think the Mac is worth. After checking many different listings, you should have an idea of what the average going rate of the Mac(s) you’re interested in are going for.

Those are universal auction rules, but what if you’re interested in searching elsewhere?

Step 6: The Search- Classifieds

Other great used Mac resources include Craig’s List, your local newspaper classifieds, and other local on-line classifieds. The previous auction rules generally apply to these other on-line search paths.

In Canada, there’s a great on-line Mac forum entitled ehMac, and on it there’s a classifieds section which allows Canadian Mac users to sell used Mac items, as well as iPods & other accessories. Many of these places are preferable to on-line auction sites, as they function more like a ‘Garage Sale’- leaving out the brokerage fees of Paypal, EMT, and other middlemen.

Step 7: The Meet & Greet Checklist

Now that you’ve found your Mac, and you’ve agreed to meet up at a planned date & time with your seller, it’s time to go over the must-dos & do-nots while you’re there.

DO:
1.) Say hello, introduce yourself, and let the seller know that you’d like to spend a few minutes to review the Mac.

2.) Check over the exterior of the system, checking for any cracks, bumps, tears, apparent damage, or otherwise suspicious appearance issues (Hint: for laptop buyers, make sure to check both the rubber feet and bottom of the case, and tilt the laptop on an angle to allow you to see the condition of the LCD exterior).

3.) Turn on the system, and evaluate the screen’s condition, the startup sound (speaker quality), and the hard disc sound. Assuming the system booted, if on a laptop check the trackpad & button for working condition, then using Spotlight, search for and open Textedit and type a little with the keyboard to make sure there are no sticky letters or numbers.

4.) Check the system profiler (again type system profiler into Spotlight), and verify that the system does have the seller’s listed hardware specifications.

5.) Shut down, then re-boot the system. It may sound silly, or extreme, but I once had to deal with an iBook that was given to me while in sleep mode. I had done the previous checks, then shut down the system to see if it would re-boot. Surprisingly, it did not. The seller was totally stressed out, and had told me it had not been shut down for days. We ended up taking it to a local reseller to have them look at it, and indeed, it needed repairs. it was a good thing it was under warranty for him, otherwise he wouldn’t have made the sale, and would have been out a laptop.

DO NOT:

1.) Take the Mac without doing the above!
2.) Allow to seller to ‘hurry you up’ in doing what you need to to feel comfortable with the sale
3.) Hesitate to reject the sale if any problems occur in your evaluation

Step 8: The Home Test

Just to make sure you’ve got a healthy Mac, pop in your first Installation Disc and boot from the disc, pressing the necessary keyboard combination to access the Hardware Test (Search Apple’s Support pages, or your User Manual for your Mac’s specific keyboard code). This will let you thoroughly test your Mac for any glitches.

Step 9: Au Revoir!

Once your Mac’s been given a clean bill of health and every-thing’s setup, mail the seller and thank them again for the sale, let them know you’re happy. Letting them know that they’ve just been great encourages them to continue down the path of used Mac righteousness. And it’s just a nice thing to do, ya know?

Step 10: Enjoy Your Mac!

It’s been a lot of work researching, finding and picking your used Mac, and you’ve saved a bundle doing it. Now it’s time to savour the fruits of your labour, and realize the beauty of your killer used Macintosh deal!

In my experience, what you’re looking for is out there- it’s a matter of patience, and perseverance to find it. Do not, under any circumstances, settle for anything less that what you hope for. I’m confident that if you use this guide as your ally in your next used Mac hunt- you’ll come away grinning.

Following “Security Update 2006-003″ ( for both Intel and PPC) many Mac users have reported that their computers will not boot and instead simply hit a blue screen or hang somewhere during the boot process. It has become apparent that there are two possible reasons for this:

1. Adobe Version Cue (comes with Creative Suite among other Adobe software products)

2. Apple Remote Desktop

For now most users are finding the simple fix is to boot into Safe Mode (hold Shift while booting up) and removing the conflicting application (usually Version Cue due to peoples “need” for Photoshop). Removing AdobeVersionCueCS2 from HD>Library>StartupItems should be a fix that doesn’t trouble Intel Mac users since Version Cue isn’t yet Universal and it is the one exception to the statement “all PowerPC apps will run under Rosetta”.

Navigate to HD>Library>Startup Items and remove the items AdoveVersionCueCS2 and AppleRemoteDesktop

Removing AppleRemoteDesktop from the startup items in Safe Mode has the same effect and should allow booting in normal mode. Apple have not yet released any information on the conflict, however there is an in-depth thread over at the Apple Discussion Forums.