Mac - page 88

Remote control of your Macintosh allows you to access a distant computer across a network or the Internet. The screen of the remote Mac appears locally, and you use your mouse and keyboard to control the distant system.  This capability can be helpful for tech support, system administration, finding missing information or more informed parenting (to the chagrin of many offspring).

With the Mac’s increasing popularity there are now an increasing number of options available for Mac Remote Control, many of which are free.  Choices include Apple’s built in Screen Sharing and Remote Desktop software, web based services like LogMeIn and GoToMyPC, and old standards like VNC.

Rising from the dead like a Newton running Mac OS 9, a new form of Mac Zombie is evolving in the wilds of Apple Geekdom: recycled old Macs being used as iPad stands.

One way for old computers to beat mortality is emulation: early Macs had Apple II emulators, PowerPC Macs running Mac OS X had Classic mode, even the venerable Lisa has an emulator.  Software emulation gives life to vintage machines long after the actual hardware ceases to function.

A new trend seems to be developing with the iPad: rather than running software within iOS, the iPad is making a home for itself inside the modified cases of old Macs!  We’ve covered these items before, but taken in aggregate a new form of Mac recycling seems to be evolving within the Cult of Apple.

Phone Disk, from Macroplant, is a utility for Mac OS X (and Windows) that runs quietly in the background on your computer until you plug-in an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad using a USB sync cable. Plugging in your favorite iDevice causes Phone Disk to seamlessly mount the iOS file system on that device to your computers file system. Once mounted you can directly access the files on that device using Finder (and Windows explorer) or any other program.

You’ll be interested in this application if you’re an IT Ninja looking for another good troubleshooting utility to carry around or you’re simply curious about the data that resides on your favorite iDevice.

I’ve been using Apple’s Magic Trackpad for just over a week, and I can confidently say it’s replaced the mouse for me.

The Magic Trackpad is easier to use, much more functional than even a multibutton mouse, and possibly less prone to causing repetitive strain injuries.

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Not knowing your Mac’s password is like locking yourself out of the house; it’s inconvenient (at best) and always happens at the worst possible time.  In our efforts to shield information from others we often wind up just blocking access for ourselves.  Fortunately there are several ways to reset your Mac password when amnesia strikes or relevant information isn’t available.

Some methods of resetting your password can affect access to the keychain, however, where many of your other passwords are stored.  Nothing in life is free…

It only makes sense that the company who brought us the first mouse would try to re-invent the way desktop computers are used. Apple is attempting to bring multi-touch to the masses with its new Magic Trackpad. While this might seem like just a trackpad, this could be a sneak peek on how Apple plans to implement iOS onto OS X. Regardless of their intentions, this is the most exciting input device since the Magic Mouse. Read the rest after the break.

Amid all the new product news on Tuesday Apple quietly shipped a driver update titled: Magic Trackpad and Multi-Touch Update 1.0. I discovered the 78.6MB update last night via Software Update on my Macbook Pro and promptly installed it.

I highly recommend this update for most recent Macbook and Macbook Pro notebooks since it adds support of the new $69 Multi-Touch Trackpad as well as adding gestures for inertial scrolling and three-finger dragging. The three-fingered gesture is my favorite since it allows me to quickly drag windows around.

A complete list of notebooks that support the new gestures can be found in this Apple support document https://support.apple.com/kb/ht4254.

Also Tuesday, Apple released updates for Windows that add support for the Magic Trackpad hardware. A 6.62MB update is available for 32-bit versions of Windows and another for the 64-bit versions of Windows is 3.98MB. It works with Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 as well as Macs running the operating system via Boot Camp.

The Apple Store is back up following some downtime this morning and the Magic Trackpad is now available.

At just $69, the Magic Trackpad provides your desktop Mac with all of the multi-touch functionality and gestures you’ll find on your Mac notebook. It looks fantastic and uses the same sculpted aluminum design as Apple’s wireless keyboard, so it will blend in perfectly on your desk.

Unless you jailbreak your iPhone, the file system will remain off limits as Apple intended. Even so, many people who jailbreak their phones stop with Cydia. There are, however, a few reasons you might want access to the file system on your device. SSH allows you to do just that using a Wi-Fi connection and a suitable Mac or PC client.

It can come in handy should you need to install something that’s not directly available on Cydia, think beta apps, etc.

Here’s Cult of Mac’s how-to guide to get you started.

If you’re going to jailbreak your iPhone or iPad, before you get started, we highly recommend you backup your device’s SHSH blobs.

With the release of iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch G3, Apple added an extra layer of security to prevent hacking, jailbreaking and unlocking. Apple is constantly closing the exploits used by jailbreak hackers by updating the firmware of its iPhone/iPt and iPad. If you accidentally upgrade your jailbroken device to Apple’s latest firmware, you can’t re-jailbreak it until hackers release new jailbreak software.

MacRumors have picked up on some claims this morning by Mac4Ever that give details on Apple’s next update to the iLife suite.

It’s rumored that the update will happen on August 7th, 2010, and will introduce a whole host of new features including a new “mystery” application:

– iLife ’11 will be sold for $79
– Release Date of 08/07/2010
– All applications will be 64-bit
– Improvements in iPhoto faces & places
– Improving the integration of social networks
– iWeb will be totally renewed
– New application (mystery!)
– Disappearance of iDVD
– MobileMe gallery in beta (with faces & places)

Several rumors have circulated recently regarding an update to iLife, some of which claim the new update will be labelled iLife ’10. However, as MacRumors points out, the iLife ’11 name would be more consistent with Apple’s previous behavior; iLife ’08 was introduced in August, 2007.

Where would the Macintosh (and Computing) World be without Bill Atkinson?  MacPaint, QuickDraw, HyperCard – Atkinson stands with the Giants.  In homage of his recent donation of the MacPaint source code to the Computer History Museum, flickr artist anoved offers this portrait of Bill Atkinson created entirely in MacPaint.  With tools like these, who needs Photoshop?  Well done!

Thanks Bill, for Everything!

Clues to the causes of Mac startup problems can be found by analyzing when in the boot process the system fails.  Problems may be related to the power supply, battery, hard drive, logic board, OS corruption or an issue with a user account.  Macs are reliable machines, but like many of us they get cranky from time to time.

Isolating where the problem is occurring is key to finding the solution.  Unplug any external peripherals (disk drives, printer, etc.) to help narrow down the cause.

Iomega’s new Mac Edition eGo Desktop Hard Drive packs a whopping 2-Terabytes in a compact, stylish package.

Available now for $249, the eGo drive offers plenty of connectivity options — USB 2.0 and a pair of FireWire 800 ports — making it suitable for a host of tasks, from backup to iMovie video editing.

A clone is a bootable backup of your Mac’s hard drive that provides redundancy for both your data and the Macintosh Operating System. Cloning is easy to do and is complementary to other backup methods like Time Machine. The ability to get up and working in minutes after a crash or system update gone awry can be a very useful thing.

Clones provide a way to rollback your Mac OS X installation.  You can keep your clone updated using synchronization software to perform incremental updates, and can use your clone to boot another Mac should the need arise.

If you’re going to jailbreak your iPhone or iPad, the first thing you MUST do is backup your device’s SHSH blobs.

With the release of iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch G3, Apple added an extra layer of security to prevent hacking, jailbreaking and unlocking. Apple is constantly closing the exploits used by jailbreak hackers by updating the firmware of its iPhone/iPt and iPad. If you accidentally upgrade your jailbroken device to Apple’s latest firmware, you can’t re-jailbreak it until hackers release new jailbreak software.

You can, however, downgrade your device to the previous firmware version which can be jailbroken — if you have your SHSH blobs on file.

You can extract these SHSH records and save them with the help of a utility called Umbrella. Here’s how:

These records are firmware specific and each time you update, you should repeat this process to save the records for the particular firmware version.

This just in: after a power outage hit the taping of Jimmy Kimmel Live! earlier today, our intrepid host lept to the rescue with a Mac user’s quick thinking – plus the Power of QuickTime.  Kimmel improvised and with the help of the crew taped the entire show using his MacBook’s iSight webcam.

Kitchen Performers and Video Bloggers rejoice – your video production tool of choice has been vindicated!  The show airs Wed 23 June at 12:05AM EST on ABC if you want to see how it all worked out…

Thanks to MacWorld for the tip.

Trying to distract attention from the iPhone 4 pre-order flustercuck, Apple has just released the Mac OS 10.6.4 update, whoch has been expected for weeks.

Weighing in at 315.5 MB, the update includes a bunch of minor fixes, including stability issues with Adobe’s Creative Suite 3, SMB file servers and DVD Player.

The Mac OS 10.6.4 update can be downloaded via the built-in Software Update application.

Here’s the full details:

Apple your idea about iPad file syncing using the manual file-sharing capabilities of iTunes is disappointing. Especially in my case — I sync my media content with my iMac, which by the way isn’t very easy to carry around, and I cannot sync that same content on my Macbook Pro. If I try to sync using iTunes on another computer my syncing options are to Cancel, Transfer Purchases, or Erase and Sync. None of these options are useful, but if I click Cancel eventually I can manually access the files shared on my iPad even on my Macbook Pro.

It isn’t clear why Apple didn’t add a simple thing like automatic file syncing, but that doesn’t matter now after I discovered Ecamm Network’s new Mac application, PadSync, which adds automatic syncing capabilities to the file sharing feature of the iPad.

Yesterday, we posted an iBook that had been hollowed out and modded into a working iPad keyboard dock.

Today? The same concept, but accomplished far more elegantly with a vintage Mac Classic… complete with a custom MacOS desktop to keep things appropriately retro.

Confused by which combination of keypresses triggers your favorite shortcut? What about trying to remember which arcane spell of glyphs describes that shortcut in Mac terminology?

There’s a site for that… or, at least, there will be, when its owner gets finished with it. Keyonary is an online directory of keyboard shortcuts . Using the search bar, you simply type in the shortcut you’d like to find and Keyonary will return it to you.

To be honest, the site’s pretty rough right now, and while the presentation is slick, the owner’s entering all these shortcuts in by hand… which means that while Photoshop and OS X are fairly well covered by Keyonary, there’s a lot of shortcuts for other popular Mac apps still to be filled.

Still, we wanted to point Keyonary out… not because of what it is now, but what we hope a little encouragement will allow it to become: an I Use This for user-submitted shortcuts to all your favorite Mac applications.

Since the days of Mac OS X 10.3 “Panther” Apple has provided a wonderful utility, Migration Assistant, to help move data between your old and new Macs. With this utility you can easily migrate your installed applications, system settings and user data from your old system to your new one.

On the whole Migration Assistant works very well, performs successfully more often than not, and has gotten better with every subsequent release of Mac OS X. However despite Apple’s best efforts there are times when Migration Assistant can’t or won’t work.

A Manual Mac System Migration is just a fancy term for copying things over. The key is knowing what needs to be moved and how to connect the two machines.

We’ve been hearing tell of an HDMI-equipped Mac Mini for awhile now, with past reports indicating that prototype Mac Minis spotted by Apple employees had their DVI port replaced with HDMI, thanks to the inclusion of NVIDIA’s MPC89 CPU.

Now Apple Insider is reporting that they’ve heard from four different source who claim that Apple is having Mac Mini supply shortages… usually a “tell” for when a new model is approaching.

According to a report in the Financial Times, Google is so fed up with Windows 7’s woeful security issues that they are now taking Redmond’s operating system by the pants seat and unceremoniously hurtling it from the building.

What machines are employees getting instead? Linux rigs… and Macs.

I’m fairly well-known for being a detractor of the convoluted mess that iTunes has become in the video and apps iPhone era. I might have even labeled it Apple’s own IE 6 at some point. That’s actually not true — it’s more Lotus Notes, trying to fit every possible feature into a single application rather than writing a bunch of specialized programs that excel at their task. From a desktop experience perspective, at least, I know I would be way happier with discrete applications for a slimmed-down music player, video player, and store/file manager.

Well, I might have found the first of that set. It’s called Instinctiv, and it’s a gorgeous, free, Mac OS X exclusive music player that actually makes listening to music on a computer intuitive again. It has some shortcomings, which I’ll address, but on most levels, it’s a superior music solution to iTunes.