http://www.macfixer.net Apple related articles from the MacFixer Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:24:19 -0500 en http://www.macfixer.net/articles/209/ cbb3bcab Sat, 06 Feb 2010 04:08:09 EST I've been in the computer repair business for a while now, and this is exactly how it goes over and over again: You know people that backup their data. You've seen hard drives that have notes on the box about backing up. Maybe you've even come across backup software before, but you don't use it regularly. Whatever the case, you don't back up your data. Then one day you lose your data. The most common way to lose data is from hard drive failure. All hard drives die, it's only a matter of time. So at this point, you have a computer that won't work, and either no backups, or maybe if you're lucky, you have old or incomplete backups. The next step is to call a computer person, like myself. Then I give you the bad news that your hard drive is dead and all it's data is lost. Sure I can put a new hard drive in and reinstall your system so your computer will work again, but all your personal data is lost. After much grief, you start over from scratch, and this time you start backing up properly. Next time you have a drive failure, you'll have a little bit of downtime, but you won't lose any data at all. Disclosure: backups aren't a guarantee. If a meteor crashes into your house and hits your computer AND your backup drive, you're kind of out of luck. But data loss due to meteor is very rare. Almost all of it comes from failing hard drives. Even a brand new computer can have a drive failure. It's always important to have an up-to-date backup. Your new computer's warranty will cover replacing the hard drive, but it won't get your data back. Do you backup? If not, you should start NOW. Don't wait until you lose all your data, like most people do. If you have Mac OS X 10.5 or newer (Leopard or Snow Leopard), it's extremely easy to back up. The operating system has really great backup software built in called Time Machine. All you have to do is plug in an external hard drive and turn Time Machine on. If you have an advanced setup, you can also use a network volume or a Time Capsule device as a backup destination. http://www.macfixer.net/articles/204/ 1835719a Tue, 15 Sep 2009 04:33:54 EST The next version of Mac OS X is here. Version 10.6, codenamed Snow Leopard. It is significantly cheaper than all of the recent previous versions of OS X. I believe the reason for that is simply that on the surface, it doesn't look very different at all. It does have a lot of under-the surface features, but for the user, it looks and feels pretty much the same. The most significant change is that this operating system only runs on Intel-based Macs. PPC Macs, G3s, G4s and G5s, are all now officially obsolete and no longer supported by the most up to date Mac OS version. The main feature this upgrade brings is greater optimization and performance. With most of the PPC code stripped out, the operating system as a whole uses a lot less space. In fact, upgrading to Snow Leopard will actually free up several GB of space on your Mac. Apple has also upgraded almost all of their apps to 64-bit. Apple also introduced two new technologies that you really won't feel at all now, but down the road they will make a huge difference. Applications on the Mac will be significantly faster. The names of these two technologies are Grand Central Dispatch, and OpenCL. Without going into too much dull detail, what these technologies do is allow programmers to greatly speed up their programs by having them more easily use all of the processors in your Mac. All Macs have multiple processors, Mac Pros can have as many as 16 virtual processor cores. They also let programmers use the graphics card in your Mac to give a tremendous speed boost to certain kinds of math. As programmers start to use these tools, programs will get faster and faster. There are lots of other even more minor changes too. Like support in Mail/iCal/Address Book, for MS Exchange servers. The bottom line is, this isn't going to be like all the previous Mac OS X upgrades, where it's this big new thing. But it does have lots of optimization and new features beneath the surface, and for only $29, you definitely want to upgrade soon! http://www.macfixer.net/articles/202/ aa78f780 Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:31:23 EST I've been using the new iPhone OS 3.0 for over a week now. I have to say, I finally feel like my iPhone is the powerful device it's supposed to be. There are many features under the surface that Apple likes to go on and on about. But I want to tell you about the features you will notice. Also keep in mind I'm using iPhoneOS 3.0 on a 1st generation iPhone, not a G3/G3S. First thing you'll notice, it's snappier. It's particularly noticeable in the phone app. Making phone calls is much faster. When you hit the phone app, it pops up almost instantly. When you hit Keypad, the keypad also pops up almost instantly. And dialing on the Keypad, I can't put my finger on it, but it feels much better and more natural too. The phone app isn't the only place you'll feel a boost. The whole phone feels faster, like there is less delay when you click or swipe on the phone. Thing's just happen. My favorite new feature of 3.0, the thing I've been dying for, is the Landscape (aka wide) keyboard. Thats when you turn your phone sideways, and the skinny little narrow keyboard turns into a wide keyboard. Apparently my thumbs are much bigger than Steve Job's thumbs. But I find it very difficult to type a lot of text on the narrow keyboard. But with all of Apple's apps now incorporating the wide keyboard, I feel like my iPhone finally is that "Internet Communication Device" Apple first advertised it as. I have 6 email accounts set up on my phone, and now I can reply to emails with ease. And without giving very short, abrupt replies. The same goes for text messaging. I've never gone over my 200/month limit before, but I might end up going over now that it's such an ease to type. Push notification is finally here. You can receive messages and sounds from apps on your phone, when they are not even running. You can talk to your friends on AIM, then switch to Mail, and still get instant messages from your friends. It really gives you the ability to multitask. There are many many other improvements, but those three are the ones that really effect me the most. I use my phone much much more these days, because of them. http://www.macfixer.net/articles/201/ 735eb48d Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:59:13 EST It just goes to show you, treat every customer like they're someone important, because they just might be. I recently helped out a customer that turned out to be a writer for the Boston Herald. He was so happy with the work I did [get his new mac to boot, recover all his data from his old dying mac, to his new mac] that he wrote a small article about MacFixer in the paper. The article is also on their site, but the print version has my company logo and my handsome face next to it ;-) http://www.macfixer.net/articles/199/ ccc484f1 Fri, 24 Apr 2009 01:49:59 EST Everyone knows Macs are easy to use. But one aspect of Mac OS X continues to confuse the less nerdy among us. This is the Disk Image file. In the old days, you would install software onto your computer by inserting a CD ROM, or even further back, a floppy disk. Usually that disk would have an Installer. You would double click that and you're on your way. These days, most software is downloaded over the internet. Mac OS X has popularized the use of Disk Images (.dmg files) as a means of transferring software. They're easy to use once you get how they work. The .dmg file is the actual file that contains all the data. When you double click the .dmg file, it mounts a "virtual" disk to your desktop. It's usually a white icon but it can be a custom icon. When you double click on the mounted virtual disk, there are three common things you could find. The most common is the application itself. No installer necessary, often times the whole self contained application is right on the disk image. This is where people make a mistake. You don't want to run the application on the disk image. Disk images are just a means of transportation. You want to copy the application from the disk image, to your applications folder. Then eject the "virtual" disk, and delete the .dmg file. Lots of people drag the application into their Dock. But that doesn't actually move the program, icons in the dock are just shortcuts to launch the program. Then every time they DO launch the program, the .dmg file has to mount it's disk image. There are many other ways running programs off the mounted disk image can cause problems. For one thing, the disk image is read-only, so if the application has to store any data internally, it won't be able to. Also, 6 months down the road when you empty out your downloads folder and delete all your .dmg files, you just deleted your only copy of the application in question. But wait, sometimes the application itself isn't sitting there on the disk image. Sometimes there is an installer on there instead. There are two kinds of installers, package installers, and custom installers. Package installers have a neat "opened box" icon, and are usually a .pkg file. Other kinds of installers could be anything, and have any kind of icon. Installers pretty much always work the same though, just double click to run through, then you're good to go. After running the installer, you are again free to eject the disk image, and delete the .dmg file. It may seem like installers are an easier way to get software, but the disk image with the application directly on it is actually the preferred way to get software. Installers can be installing all sorts of files, all over your computer. With an application directly on a disk image, you know what's on it and you know where it's going, because you are putting it there. So in summary, when you download a disk image that contains the whole application on it, simply copy it to your Applications folder, then eject the disk image and trash the .dmg file. And the most common application that comes this way is without a doubt, Firefox. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, just give it a download. http://www.macfixer.net/articles/195/ a85f88c4 Sat, 07 Mar 2009 04:27:43 EST Last Tuesday, Apple dropped a whole slew of upgrades on us. These include new iMacs with faster processors, better graphics chips, and a big drop in price for the entry level 24-inch model. The new iMacs can also hold 8 GB of RAM, which is pretty nice. The only thing they don't have is 4-core processors, like some sites had rumored. The new Mac Pros have intel's new Nehalem processor. The clock speed is a bit slower but the speed is supposed to be much faster. It's still only available in 4 and 8 core models. No 16 core Mac Pro's yet. However the new processors have hyper-threading that gives them "16 virtual cores". The Mac Pro also has some new graphics options. The default is the GeForce GT 120 with an optional Radeon HD 4870. The Pro's use DDR3 RAM now. Apple also had some minor updates for the 15-inch MacBook Pro and the Airport devices. But the BIG BIG news, is that Apple FINALLY released new Mac Minis! So lets go through my Mac mini prediction page from a few months ago and see how well I did... I thought the new minis would have a redesigned case. I figured no more plastic top, something more resembling the new MacBooks. Nope... oh well. The insides were very much as predicted. 1066 MHz system bus with DDR3 RAM. nVidia 9400m Graphics & chipset. 4 GB max memory. And 2.0 & 2.26 GHz clock speeds. They also added n speed wireless. I was mostly right on the video out. They did add a mini display port, that does support a 30" display. And they did get rid of the full size DVI port, but strangely, they added a Mini DVI port too. One thing I got wrong was the price. I thought they would drop the price a little bit, especially considering the state of the economy. But they kept the price the same, $599 for the entry level model. I had predicted firewire would be gone, but hoped that they would keep it and upgrade it to FireWire 800. They DID keep it and upgrade it to FireWire 800. I'm psyched about this! My Wish-List also had dual display ports, which I mentioned above. It wasn't the way I expected it, but they did it. They didn't add any expansion slots but that was a very very long slot to begin with. The one spec I'm not sure about is the SATA with Port-Multiplication. I haven't yet been able to confirm one way or the other. I sure hope it has this feature, we'll see. But overall, these new minis are awesome! I'll be ordering one very soon. http://www.macfixer.net/articles/191/ 74298cd7 Wed, 14 Jan 2009 23:31:18 EST In the beginning, all LCD's were matte. A matte screen means that it's not shiny. You really can't catch a reflection off of it. Matte screens are great, you can use them in a well lit room without having to deal with reflections. Then Apple decided that matte screens are ok but glossy screens are great. Glossy screens have shiny glass over them. They make darks look darker, giving an illusion of deeper contrast and sharper colors. And the trade-off is that they are like mirrors. They reflect everything. In a well-lit room, it's like looking in a mirror. Outdoors, all you see is what's behind you. Unless you do all of your computer using in a Cave, glossy screens are not good. Then Apple made a horrible decision. Glossy screens are so great, we don't need an option anymore. Everything will be glossy. The glossy screens on Aluminum iMacs are horrible. But the iMac's are the only real choice for their price/performance bracket, so I have to recommend them anyway. And they're otherwise great computers, you're just going to have to deal with tons of really bad glare while you use it. Apple thankfully brought back the matte option on the new MacBook Pro 17". So the current screen situation is this: iMac 20" and iMac 24" are all glossy. MacBook 13" MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro 15" are all glossy. The MacBook Pro 17" is glossy but has an available $50 matte option. If you're spending all that money on the laptop, I highly recommend you spend the extra $50 and get the screen you can actually see. Of course the Mac mini and Mac Pro don't have built in displays. Apple makes stand alone displays, which used to be all matte, but recently Apple again replaced the 23" cinema display with an all new 24" display that is glossy. So the 20" and 30" cinema displays are matte, but the 24 is glossy. Personally I would love to replace my Mac Pro tower with a high end iMac in 6 months to a year. But the glossy screen is a deal breaker. It's just unbearable to constantly be fighting the reflections. Hopefully, Apple well get the hint and make matte screens an option on all their LCDs. The photo is of a new Aluminum MacBook 13" and a 20" iMac, both glossy. You see what's behind you as well as you see what's on the screen. http://www.macfixer.net/articles/188/ a7185c27 Mon, 29 Dec 2008 00:56:14 EST As of this posting, Apple's Mac mini has gone 509 days since it's last update. That's nearly 17 months. That's a VERY long time, an eternity in computer years. Finally, it looks like an update is eminent, and with it comes my New Mac mini Specification Predictions! The Case: I think they are going to remove the white plastic from the top, and have the top piece be a solid chunk of aluminum, similar in style to the main body of the new MacBooks. I also think they will find a way to make it a little smaller. Not much, but I'm sure they'll have a very exact number for just how much smaller it is. I'm going to say about 10% smaller. The Innards: On the inside, I'm nearly certain they will upgrade it to the new nVidia chipset they use in the MacBooks. This includes the integrated 9400m graphics. Current mini's come with 1.83 or 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duos. New mini's will likely see a modest boost to something like 2.0 Ghz to 2.4 GHz, or maybe 2.2 GHz to 2.4 GHz. They are probably going to use a soldered-on processor like the laptops currently use, instead of the upgradable processor slot that current minis have. Mini's have always used laptop hard drives, so SSD will probably be an option, even though there's not much mass appeal there. Also this new nVida chipset means an upgrade to a 1066 MHz bus and DDR3 RAM, again matching the new MacBooks. And the Max RAM will officially be 4 GB. It may be one of the many Macs that can unofficially hold more but who knows. I/O: Bye bye DVI port, hello Display Port. Other than the hassle of having to buy a new Adapter to make your old monitors work ($20 for normal displays, more for a dual link adapter for 30inch displays), this won't mean much to anyone. Also I think the new mini WILL support a 30" display at full resolution, for the first time. Here is the sad part. Like the MacBooks, I predict FireWire will be no more. Your four USB ports will be all of your I/O. Getting rid of FireWire is such a horrible thing for apple to do to it's computers. FireWire is so versatile, and can do so many things that USB cannot. But, despite that, I predict Apple is going to get rid of it. The mini will also be upgraded to n speed wireless. And those are my predictions. I also think/hope they will drop the price points back to the original entry level mini price of $500. That would be sweet. We'll see. And now, my mini wish list. Things I want to see, but I highly doubt I will. FireWire 800: Not only should they keep firewire, they should upgrade it to FireWire 800. Thats about 100 MBytes/sec. That's pretty good. Especially if you are using a raid, 'Regular' FireWire aka FireWire 400, and it's 50MByte/sec throughput, is not going to be enough. And forget about USB puuhhleeeeze. SATA with Port-Multiplication: The SATA specification has a feature that lets you hook up what is basically a SATA HUB to an SATA port, so you can hook up as many as 5 independent SATA drives to one SATA port. A 3Gbit SATA port can do 375MBytes/sec. But the SATA port has to support this feature, for you to use one of these Port Multipliers. So the feature I want to see is for the built-in SATA interface that the mini's internal hard drive is attached to, to support Port Multiplication. This would make it very easy for hardware hackers (the good kind of hacker, not the bad kind) to remove the internal hard drive, route the internal SATA port outside, and connect it to a 5-Bay eSata drive tower. With this and FireWire 800, the mini would go from a Max theoretical throughput of 50 MBytes/sec to a theoretical max of 475 MBytes/sec (ignoring USB). They could even design the new case in such a way that it would be easier to poke a little hole in it somewhere, to run an SATA cable through. A mini like this, with Core2Duo power, 4 GB of RAM, HUGE data I/O, and super low power consumption (minis use on average 20 watts of power), these minis would be incredibly versatile, while still being a great simple basic Mac for the brand new Mac user. Dual Display Ports: With the switch to Mini DisplayPort, there's more than enough room for two display ports on the back of the mini. And I'm sure a 9400m can handle dual displays. Every video card since the early 00's has been able to do that. (except maybe Intel integrated graphics?). ExpressCard Slot: Last but not least... actually last and least (likely to happen), the ExpressCard Slot. 15" and 17" Mac laptops have had expansion slots forever. From PCMCIA/PC Card to Cardbus, to the now modern ExpressCard34 and ExpressCard54. This would be, the least likely thing for Apple to add to a mini. But it would be pretty awesome if they did. This would make the mini a hacker's dream. One possibility would be to make the built-in Airport Card an ExpressCard, that way hacker-types could remove airport, and put in a 3rd party express card if they wanted something like more FireWire ports instead of Airport. That would be sweet. There you have it. My predictions for what the New Mac mini's will be. Followed by my wish list of what I wish the New Mac mini's would be... but they won't. Enjoy http://www.macfixer.net/articles/184/ c3835012 Tue, 02 Dec 2008 05:11:57 EST For the longest time, I was battling a problem with my MacBook where it would crash maybe 33% of the time, when you closed the LID. I had done every trick in the book, but the problem remained. I was convinced it was a hardware problem and just lived with it. Then I got a brand new Macbook and it was doing the same thing! I couldn't believe it, I was so pissed!! Then finally, I stumbled upon the answer! Newer Mac Laptops use a feature called Safe Sleep, where the computer writes the contents of your RAM to the hard drive. That way, if your MacBook is sleeping and the battery completely dies, your computer can still resume from where you left off once you plug it in. This greatly slows down the process of falling asleep for your Mac. My current MacBook has 4 GB of RAM. Even coming straight from RAM, writing 4 GB of data to the hard drive is going to take a little while. This also means that the computer is going to use up 4 GB of extra disk space on the drive. But heres where it gets bad. I boot other computers off my MacBook's hard drive regularly so I can run repair utilities on them etc. I booted a Mac Pro off my MacBook's hard drive. The MacPro had 8 GB of RAM. So when I found safe sleep ram storage file, it was 8 GB in size! And of course, this whole system tends to not work great, causing LOTS of crashes when you close the lid. And a little more on those crashes. What happens is the sleep light lights up, but doesn't pulse, it just stays lit. If you don't notice this and throw the computer in your bag, you're in for a surprise when you get home and remove the computer. When the computer crashes, it apparently runs the processors at full speed. The computer very quickly gets EXTREMELY hot. Putting it in a bag in this state can seriously shorten the lifespan of your Mac. So weighing all this against the only drawback of disabling safe sleep, which is that if your battery dies completely while it's asleep, you'll lose unsaved documents as if you had done a hard reboot.... to me it's a no brainer, bye bye safe sleep. So, To Disable Safe Sleep: Type these two commands in the Terminal, and hit return: sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0 sudo nvram "use-nvramrc?"=false Presto, instant fast sleep, and no more crashing!! Now if you want to reclaim some hard drive space, an amount of space equal to the amount of RAM your computer has, do the following: In the Finder, choose Go To Folder... from the Go menu Type "/var/vm" into the prompt and hit return Don't touch the swapfiles, they are important. But if there is a file in that folder called 'sleepimage', just drag it to the trash and you're good to go. http://www.macfixer.net/articles/183/ c6d3170c Tue, 02 Dec 2008 04:09:56 EST The default dock in Leopard is the "3D Dock". At first it looks pretty cool. It's very shiny, it has a reflective gloss to it that reflects any windows you hold near it. But it doesn't take long for this dock to really get on your nerves. Here are my main beefs with it: - It's Slow! If you're using Leopard on a G4 for example, it takes a lot of computer power to generate this glossy, reflective dock. Switching over to the no-glass dock will speed up your whole system! Especially if you're running it on slower, unsupported systems. - It's hard to see! Apple has changed the indicator that tells you when an application is running. It used to be a small black triangle, now it's a small glowing light. This would be fine except the dock is a reflective glossy 3D looking object now, and these lights blend right in, making it very hard to see what apps are running and not. - It's awkward! No matter what your dock looks like, your screen is only 2D. The 3D look is just leaves you with icons that are, in the real 2D nature of your screen, half on the dock, half hanging off the top of the dock. And between all the gloss, and reflections, and transparency, its just a big, ugly mess. The No-Glass dock on the other hand, is the best Dock apple has ever created. It doesn't try to be something it's not. It does 2D and it does it well. There is transparency but there is no gloss, and no reflection. Just a dark and well defined area with a clear border. Inside this area that is the 2D dock, your icons have increased contrast and increased visibility. How To Do It: Paste these lines into the Terminal and hit return: To switch to the NoGlass Dock: defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES; killall Dock To switch back to the default, ugly, 3D Dock: defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean NO; killall Dock