Tips

Tell Time Machine to slow it down now

Posted on Jul. 2, ’08, 4:29 PM PT by Dan Pourhadi

Category | Tips

Like Derik, I, too, get frustrated by the selfish demands of Time Machine and its stubborn adherence to an unchangeable, regimented backup schedule. And it’s particularly maddening for me: I have a MacBook Air, which is bottlenecked by its puny hard drive as it is; plus, I use Time Machine over WiFi to a disk connected to my AirPort Extreme (a la Time Capsule), which clobbers my network every time it runs a backup.

And like Derik, I often opt to just brick-wall the backup by canceling it so it won’t interfere with whatever I’m working on at the time. But that should be an unnecessary inconvenience—this is an obvious-enough problem, so why isn’t there an effective one-time solution?

Well, there is, kinda: just extend the length of the interval between backups, so it isn’t bothering you nearly as much. But, as described by Mac OS X Hints, doing that is not as simple as clicking a checkbox. You need to tweak a Time Machine preference file (plist) manually.

In /System/Library/LaunchDaemons, you’ll see a file named com.apple.backupd-auto.plist. Open it in a text editor, and look for this:

<key>StartInterval</key>

<integer>3600</integer>

3600 represents the number of seconds between Time Machine backups; change it to whatever length you think will annoy you less. Save, and you’re done, free to go about your business without the constant threat of Time Machine brutality.

No, not you. You.

Posted on Jul. 2, ’08, 3:36 PM PT by Dan Pourhadi

Category | Tips

Visualize this: My MacBook Air rests on the coffee table in front of my couch, where I can easily check Twitter, my email, or, of course, Facebook, to monitor what my friends have rated me on Compare People (80% think I’m a “better catch,” hellz yeah). Behind that is my TV, on top of a stack of media gizmos, including an Apple TV. Now visualize me trying to use my Apple Remote to control the Apple TV, only to annoyingly control both that and the MacBook Air at the same time.

I could physically move the Air, but that would mean I’d have to get off the couch, obviously not an option; and I’d have to do it every time I wanted to use the Remote. The other option is to pair the MacBook with its own Apple Remote…but I, like many, have never used the Remote, and thus have no idea where it is, making pairing impossible.

So what to do? Eliminate the source of the problem: Disable the IR receiver entirely by turning on the “Disable remote control infrared receiver” checkbox in the Security pane of System Preferences. It’s a common sense solution that took me weeks to come up with, probably because I didn’t know that option existed; before simply looking for the damn checkbox, I spent a while figuring out how to disable the actual kernel extension that controls the receiver. Then I saw this Mac OS X Hints post, which made me feel like an idiot.

But if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s embarrassing myself so others will learn from my numbskullery and avoid their own Dan Pourhadi Moments. So the lesson here: sometimes, things really are as easy as they seem; don’t complicate a solution until you’re sure that problem-solving fix-all checkbox really doesn’t exist.

Oh, and it also explains why only four of my friends voted me as “smarter” on Compare People, and why I’m ranked 89th “more useful.” Whatever; they think I have pretty eyes and great hair, and that’s all that matters anyway.

Back that drive up. (Seriously.)

Posted on Jul. 1, ’08, 9:59 AM PT by Cyrus Farivar

Category | Tips

So Chris Breen’s recent experience with fires down in the Santa Cruz area got me thinking about my backup strategy.

Until I got a new MacBook earlier this year with Time Machine, I was backing up across my network to my in-house media server (really, just a G4 Tower with a bunch of hard drives in it) using Retrospect. Given that I do a lot of freelance radio work and am working on a book, a lot of my large audio files are stored over there. I have one drive that serves as a repository that then gets copied to another drive within the tower, as well. I have hours and hours of interviews in WAV files and many text files of notes to go with them.

However, when I went to copy some of the files over to my MacBook, I discovered that my audio and text files for my book — all of them — were corrupted. These are irreplaceable files of interviews done during weeks of overseas travel over a year ago. The audio files wouldn’t open in anything (I kept getting OSStatus error -208 — anyone ever seen this?) and the text files were just gibberish. After a few hours of panicking, I discovered an old backup file that I still had on a random drive from November 2007 and that did have uncorrupted data on it. (I also have an off-site backup, a set of DVD-RWs that get overwritten every month or so, that I keep in my car, but the data on those was corrupted too, as it had made a backup of bad data.)

So the lesson here is, check your backups periodically — and when possible, check to make sure that your backups are working properly. And make backups of the backups. Rinse, lather, repeat.

Having problems “ejecting and trashing stuff”? Try What’s Keeping Me?

Posted on Jun. 20, ’08, 11:00 AM PT by Aayush Arya

Category | Software

If I had a buck for every time I tried to eject a disk or empty the trash and it threw up the “this operation cannot be completed because the item is in use” error, I’d be a millionaire by now. OK, maybe not a millionaire, but I’d have amassed quite a hoarding. Fine, I’d have twenty odd bucks but that’s beside the point.

Enter What’s Keeping Me?, a little application from HAMSoft Engineering, that specializes in getting rid of those pesky system processes that rear their ugly heads every once in a while to poke fun at the poor trash can. And while the trash has it’s own kryptonite powered secure delete mode to help it get out of tight corners, what about those darned DVDs and DMGs that just won’t eject no matter what you try?

As its name and icon suggest, or maybe not, What’s Keeping Me? immediately identifies the offending items in such scenarios and terminates them, allowing you to get on with the spritely act of ejecting disks and emptying the trash. After all, what’s more satisfying than that dry scrunching of paper that indicates you’ve just gotten rid of the waste on your system?

It’s licensed as “donationware”, which means that you can have it for free if you want but the developer would appreciate a little kick back in the form of a donation, $5 in this case, if you decide that you like the application. Grab it from the HAMSoft Engineering website.

[Via TUAW]

Enable three-finger swiping in Firefox 3 (sorta)

Posted on Jun. 18, ’08, 11:38 AM PT by Dan Pourhadi

Category | Tips

If you’ve got a MacBook Air or one of the newer MacBook Pros with the fancy Multi-Touch trackpad, you’ve probably tried three-finger page navigation in Safari—and there’s a good chance its insidious incorporation into your life has made it a natural, habitual Must-Have web browsing tool.

I downloaded Firefox 3 yesterday, eager to explore the hype, and maybe try some of those fancy Firefox extensions people have told me about for ages. I launched it, clicked around MacUser, then three-finger-swiped to go back.

Then my gut sank: swiping didn’t work. Dun dun dunnnn.

I quit Firefox on instinct, and hopped back into the warmth and familiarity of Safari, where my Multi-Touch gestures were waiting for me with flowers and a smile. But still: Bummer.

So I did some searching, trying to figure out how to remedy this crime against humanity, and the clever folks in this MacRumors thread offer a nifty solution: MultiClutch, an app (which we wrote about in March) that allows you to assign trackpad gestures to any keyboard shortcut in any app.

Install it, add Firefox to its application list, and configure the gestures: Left Swipe assigned to Cmd-[ (Firefox’s “back”) and Right Swipe assigned to Cmd-] (Firefox’s “forward”).

And voila! The trick, she is done.

Now I get to dig my teeth into the actual hardcore features of Firefox. Like themes.

Mmm, themes.

Update: If you’re interested in MultiClutch and want to learn more, the Mothership covered the app in great depth in this Mac Gems article, as well as this Macworld Video. Check ‘em out.

Macworld brings you compendiums of MobileMe and iPhone 3G QnA

Posted on Jun. 18, ’08, 9:50 AM PT by Aayush Arya

Category | Tips

We brought you word about Apple’s FAQ for .Mac users apprehensive about the upcoming transition to MobileMe a week ago. If that wasn’t enough to satisfy your appetite for MobileMe related QnA, you’ll be glad to know that the mothership has just the thing for you today.

In “MobileMe: What you need to know”, the Macworld staff tries to answer frequently heard questions about all things MobileMe. From the very basic “what is MobileMe” to the infinitesimally complex “what browser do I need to access Me.com”, they have it all neatly compiled in a helpful article so that you don’t have to go scurrying around looking for information. The sheer level of concern is enough to warm anyone’s heart.

On similar lines, they also have an article arming you with all the information you need before going out and plonking your $199 on an iPhone 3G, so give both of them a read if you just can’t wait for July 11th to come a-knockin’.

Mac maintenance and troubleshooting tips from Macworld and Apple

Posted on Jun. 5, ’08, 10:59 AM PT by Aayush Arya

Category | Tips

Our very own Dan Frakes and the Apple support website ninjas have joined forces to bring you a veritable feast of tips and tricks on what to do and what to avoid when trying to keep your beloved Mac up and running.

First up is an article on “Isolating issues in Mac OS X”, straight from the horse’s mouth. The article aims to help you diagnose the cause of problems on your Mac before you go running to Apple for help and points out some basic practices you should follow in order to find out what went wrong.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll most likely sign onto some Apple centric discussion forum and ask for assistance. That’s the point where Dan’s five pointers about Mac maintenance myths comes in, serving to draw your attention to the futility of some of the most commonly suggested fixes for all sorts of problems on Mac OS X. In another companion article, he dishes out some Mac maintenance tips of his own.

So the next time your Mac starts misbehaving, make sure you’ve brushed up your doctoring skills and are well prepared for the task at hand. We wouldn’t want to see the poor thing suffer more pain than it already has, now would we?

Banish the always-on-top Help Viewer with ease

Posted on Jun. 3, ’08, 8:56 AM PT by Dan Moren

Category | Tips

Back on Valentine’s Day we covered one way to tweak Leopard’s new floating Help Viewer and make it behave like it used to in the good old days of Tiger and before. The way it just floats over everything is plumb unnatural if you ask me.

Unfortunately, the tip from February was a bit complicated, so we were pretty psyched to see a much simpler solution make its way onto Mac OS X Hints this morning. It appears that you can simply issue this one line command into Terminal to return the Help Viewer’s window behavior to normal.

defaults write com.apple.helpviewer NormalWindow -bool true

There you go; that’s it. I gave this a try and it worked like a charm—suck it, Help Window! If you’re looking for a way to access the Help Viewer via command-tab and the Dock, hit the above link for the extra instructions.

Winmail.dat files spoiling your day? TNEF’s Enough solves your woes.

Posted on May. 30, ’08, 8:10 AM PT by Dan Moren

Category | Tips

Though Mac users we may all be, the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily share in our enlightenment. We still live in a Windows world, and that means dealing with certain Microsoftian annoyances. Take email attachments, for example. Ever gotten a forward from a friend asking you to check out a knee-slappingly hilarious attachment? Eagerly anticipating a single bright spark to your otherwise dull existence you scroll down and find…an impenetrable “winmail.dat” file.

Winmail.dat files come to us courtesy of Microsoft Outlook and Exchange users. Encoded as rich text, these files, which have a MIME type of application/ms-tnef, are pretty much useless to anybody who doesn’t run Outlook.

Boooo. Yes, you could reach out with the power of the Force and strangle your correspondent to death, but that might just be a wee bit overreactive. Instead, try Joshua Jacob’s TNEF’s Enough. This one-trick pony application lets you open up winmail.dat files and save the attachments secreted within. Works like a charm (just used it myself yesterday) and it’s freeware (donations welcome).

[via TwisterMC]

Sync your Google contacts with Address Book, no iPhone/iPod touch required

Posted on May. 29, ’08, 9:15 AM PT by Dan Moren

Category | Tips

Sometimes people accuse of us being totally biased in favor of Apple, but you know what? We call things like we see ‘em. You may disagree—and hey, it’s cool; that’s what freedom of speech is all about. But we’re not afraid to go up against Cupertino when we believe in it—what are they going to do, revoke our Apple Fan Club Membership?

Hence, this whole deal with syncing your Google contacts with Address Book in 10.5.3, which only appears to work for iPhone and iPod touch users. We call it lame-o, loud and clear. What kind of elitist hornswoggle is this, Apple?

Anyway, if you’re among those who want to sync your Google Contacts over, but haven’t yet shelled out for a fancy handheld device, our friends over at Lifehacker come to the rescue with this useful workaround for fighting the Man.

It involves meddling around with Property List files, so either you’ll need to have installed OS X’s Developer Tools so you can run Property List Editor, or you’ll need to pick up PlistEdit Pro. And, most importantly, you’ll want to backup the existing .plist file, just in case something goes horribly, terribly awry (we doubt it will, but better safe than sorry).

Voilà, you should now have the ability to sync your contacts with Google. I can’t try this out, as I already have the Google option in Address Book (thanks, iPhone), but please let us know if it works or doesn’t work for you.