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Mac 101: Format choices for USB flash drives
The overwhelming majority of USB flash drives you buy are going to come in one of two formats: FAT32 or NTFS. The first format, FAT32, is fully compatible with Mac OS X, though with some drawbacks that we'll discuss later. If the drive comes formatted in NTFS, which is the default file system for Windows, you're going to want to re-format the drive because Mac OS X can't write files to NTFS-formatted volumes (at least not without a bunch of extra work that's beyond the scope of this article). How do you tell which format your brand-new USB drive has? Hook it up to your Mac and launch the Disk Utility app, located in your Utilities folder (which is in Applications). Your new drive should appear in the left-hand column, and clicking the "Partition" tab will bring up info on the drive which includes its current format. If the drive's format comes up as MS-DOS (FAT) or, less likely, ExFAT, you may be able to simply leave the drive as-is and not bother reformatting it. If the drive is listed as NTFS-formatted, you're going to need to format it to something else if you want full compatibility with Mac OS X. There are several possible file system formats you can use for a USB flash drive, and changing them in Disk Utility is as easy as selecting the number of partitions you want on the drive (usually just one), picking the format you want for the drive, and clicking "Apply." Note that this will erase all information on the drive, so make absolutely sure you've got copies of everything before moving forward. Disk Utility gives you five different choices for drive formats in OS X Lion. Unless you have extraordinary needs, you can safely ignore two of them: Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled) and Free Space. I'll discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the other three formats below. Mac OS Extended (Journaled) - This is the default file system format for Mac OS X drives. Advantages: Formatting your USB flash drive this way will give you full interoperability with Macs. It also includes support for features from OS X Lion, such as Versions. You can even set up an OS X startup drive if you have the right files, the know-how, and a big enough flash drive, which will allow you to boot your Mac off an external disk if something goes wrong with your built-in drive. The "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" option will have the highest degree of support for Mac OS X features, and there's no limit to the size of files you can put on the drive. Disadvantages: Windows-running PCs can read files from drives formatted this way, but they can't write to them (at least not without the same amount of work it takes to get OS X to write to NTFS-formatted drives). If you're transferring files from Macs to PCs, this won't be an issue; however, transferring files from PCs to Macs won't be possible if your drive is formatted in "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)." If you will only be working with Macs and not PCs, this may not be an issue. Otherwise, you may need to consider one of the file formats discussed below. MS-DOS (FAT) - This is Disk Utility's name for the FAT32 filesystem. Advantages: FAT32 offers near-universal interoperability with virtually every computing system on the planet. A drive formatted this way can easily transfer files between Macs and PCs. You can also move files to video game systems like the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii. Virtually all cameras and videocameras support FAT32, too. It's the closest thing we have to a universal file system format, which is why most flash drives are formatted this way right out of the box. Disadvantages: FAT32 doesn't support files larger than 4 GB, and that's its greatest drawback. You also can't create a startup drive for your Mac using this format. Furthermore, FAT32 doesn't support OS X Lion's Versions feature -- something users have discovered the hard way when working directly off of files stored on a USB flash drive (something we recommend against doing). However, those downsides may be more than outweighed by FAT32's near-universal support, and if you don't think you're going to be dealing with files bigger than 4 GB, this may be the optimal choice. ExFAT - A newer file format, supported in Mac OS X 10.6.5 or later. Advantages: exFAT has many of the same advantages as FAT32 in that it's a disk format that offers interoperability between Macs and PCs. It has one big advantage over FAT32: exFAT supports file sizes larger than 4 GB, so if you have a need to move huge files between Macs and PCs, this is likely the format you'll want for your flash drive. exFAT is supported by the following operating systems: Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6.5 or greater) OS X Lion Windows XP SP2 or later (with an additional update for exFAT support) Windows Vista SP1 or later Windows 7 Disadvantages: As a relatively newer file system format, exFAT isn't supported in older versions of Mac OS X (anything prior to 10.6.5) or anything older than Windows XP SP2. If you won't be dealing with older Macs or PCs, this may not be a problem. Of greater issue is that most consumer electronics (cameras, camcorders, video game systems) don't support exFAT, either. If you need to transfer files between your Mac and one of these non-PC devices, you're almost certainly going to have to format your flash drive in FAT32 instead. The Bottom Line Here's a basic rundown of which format we recommend for your USB flash drive, broken down by use case. If you absolutely, positively will only be working with Macs and no other system, ever: Use Mac OS Extended (Journaled). If you need to transfer files larger than 4 GB between Macs and PCs: Use exFAT. In all other cases: Use MS-DOS (FAT), aka FAT32.
Mac 101: Upgrade your Mac's RAM
Upgrading your Mac's RAM is one of the simplest and cheapest ways to improve its performance, and it might be more necessary than ever if you're running OS X Lion. While Apple states that the minimum required RAM for Lion is 2 GB, in my experience this is nowhere near enough memory to get Apple's latest OS running smoothly, especially since the latest version of Safari has a nasty habit of chewing through RAM. If you're running OS X Lion on your Mac I'd say the actual minimum RAM is more like 4 GB, and if your Mac will accept 8 GB or more, there's no reason not to max it out if you can afford to. For some reason many Mac users have got the idea that replacing RAM will void your warranty or your AppleCare agreement. That's not the case at all for the current Macs in Apple's lineup. Apple even provides instructions for swapping out RAM in the instruction booklet that comes with modern Macs, and in OS X Lion the System Information application's RAM tab provides a link to online memory upgrade instructions. If you're intimidated at the thought of cracking open your Mac, don't be. Swapping out the RAM is easy enough for anyone to do it -- if you know how to use a screwdriver, you know how to swap out your Mac's RAM. In fact, the actual physical process of upgrading the RAM is so easy that the hardest part may be finding the correct RAM in the first place. It's important to match up the specs of the replacement RAM with what your machine will accept, because otherwise it may not work properly -- or at all. I generally source my RAM from OWC, because their site takes nearly all of the guesswork out of finding the correct RAM for any given model of Mac. OWC even performs testing to discover the actual maximum amount of RAM a Mac will accept as opposed to Apple's often more conservative figures. For example, Apple's official stats for my Early 2008 MacBook Pro state a max RAM of 4 GB, but testing from OWC and other sources shows my model will actually accept a total of 6 GB. Newegg is another good site to find RAM, and you can often find some good discounts there. However, since it's not a Mac-specific site, you may have slightly more difficulty finding the correct RAM for your Mac. As general guidelines for optimum performance, it's usually best to make sure your Mac has the same amount of RAM in each slot. In other words, if your Mac has two RAM slots and will accept a maximum of 8 GB of RAM, you're usually going to get far better performance with 4 GB of RAM in each slot than you would with 4 GB in one slot and 2 GB in another, and not just because of the additional 2 GB of RAM. It's also generally a good idea to have all of your Mac's RAM from the same manufacturer. There are exceptions to these recommendations, but you'll want to follow them unless your system is unusual in some way. Once you've found the right RAM for your Mac, here's a list of what you'll need: RAM (it's rather important to remember this) Phillips #00 screwdriver (for most Macs) A step-by-step guide -- Apple's own guides are decent, but iFixit's are more in-depth Some Macs are easier to upgrade than others. The MacBook Air's RAM is impossible to upgrade, as it's soldered directly onto the logic board. The pre-unibody models of the Mac mini were notoriously difficult to work on, requiring substantial disassembly to access the RAM, but the unibody Mac mini makes upgrading RAM almost absurdly easy -- you don't need any tools other than your fingers. Mac Pros require a fair bit of disassembly to access the RAM, but that model's modular design makes this relatively easy. The iMac's RAM is also easy to get at, a stark contrast to the risky-looking procedure required to replace its hard drive. I've focused on portable Macs for our own mini-guide simply because that's what I have access to. Though in most cases they require more disassembly than their desktop counterparts, it's still nothing to balk at if you know how to use a screwdriver. Pre-unibody MacBook Pro Swapping the RAM on this model is simple and requires very little disassembly. Remove the battery, remove four screws on the RAM shield and the shield itself, and you're in. I've done many RAM swaps on the older MacBook Pros, and it generally takes me less than ten minutes total. Pre-unibody MacBook Servicing this Mac's RAM is also extremely easy. Remove the battery, loosen some captive screws on a retaining bracket and remove that, and you have easy access to not only the RAM but also the hard drive. The pic below is from a recent repair job I did for a friend's MacBook; swapping out both her RAM and hard drive took less than 20 minutes. Getting at the RAM on this model is very easy thanks to the release levers Apple thoughtfully included. Pushing on the lever causes the RAM to pop out. Polycarbonate (plastic) unibody MacBook Getting at the RAM on the unibody Macs isn't quite as "user friendly," as novice users may be put off at the idea of having to expose the entirety of the "guts" of their Macs for a simple RAM upgrade. The good news is that even though you have to remove the entire bottom panel on the unibody MacBooks, Apple's made this very easy. Once again, all you need is a screwdriver and the courage to proceed. Remove eight Phillips screws (kudos to Apple for not using crazy Y-slotted or security Torx screws) and you'll be ready to remove the Mac's bottom panel. This part can be tricky; in theory the panel shouldn't be exceptionally difficult to lift off at this point, but I had to fight with the panel on my wife's MacBook for a couple minutes before it finally budged. Once removed, your Mac will look like the picture below. The RAM is exposed and sandwiched between the logic board and hard drive. Removing it is supposed to be easy, but the clearance between the RAM and hard drive was so tight that I found it a bit difficult to remove the RAM from the lower slot. Incidentally, removing the hard drive is also very easy if you happen to be doing that upgrade, too; removing a single retaining bracket with a Torx screwdriver allows you to lift the drive out and swap it with a new one. The procedure for the unibody MacBook Pro is essentially the same for both RAM and hard drive upgrades. Even though it may seem intimidating to have to remove the entire bottom of your computer for these upgrades, the unibody Macs should be quite easy to service even for novice users. Even though I had to fight with the lower panel and the lower-slotted RAM when I upgraded my wife's MacBook, it still only took about 15 minutes from start to finish. Once you've put everything back together and started your Mac back up, you can verify that the Mac recognizes the new RAM by accessing "About This Mac" from the Apple menu. If all has gone well, your new RAM will show up and your Mac should feel much snappier overall.
Mac 101: Don't forget about Hot Corners
More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice Mac users. After reading fellow TUAW blogger Dave Caolo's post on Mac OS Lion and Mission Control, and then TUAW blogger Chris Rawson's Additional Tips for OS X Lion's Mission Control, I thought it pertinent to mention a few further words on Hot Corners. With the advent of advanced multi-touch gestures in new Macs, it's easier than ever to get around Mac OS X, and even more so in OS X Lion with Mission Control. But since I don't have a newer Mac with advanced multi-touch gestures, I find Hot Corners invaluable in Lion, as I did in Snow Leopard and previous versions of Mac OS X before it. Even if I did have access to advanced multi-touch gestures, I'm certain I'd still make full use of Hot Corners. Hot Corners are the assignment of certain features to the four corners of your desktop. A Hot Corner is activated by shoving your mouse pointer in the respective corner of your desktop screen. A Hot Corner can be assigned to turn your screen saver on, put your display to sleep, display all open windows or, as Dave mentioned in his post, open Mission Control -- which is useful if you're like me and don't have a newer multi-touch trackpad like me. Personally, I've assigned my bottom right Hot Corner to open Launch Pad, it's a quick and easy way to access all my applications. I find using a Hot Corner much quicker than opening Launch Pad from the dock and then opening an application. My bottom left Hot Corner is assigned to show my desktop. Activating this Hot Corner shoves every open window on my desktop to the left, leaving me free to peruse files and documents on my desktop, and then by activating the Hot Corner again, all my open windows return to exactly the way they were before. My top right Hot Corner opens Mission Control and my top left Hot Corner puts my display to sleep. It couldn't be simpler! To assign a Hot Corner in OS X Lion, go to System Preferences and click on Mission Control. You'll find the Hot Corners button at the bottom left of that window. For previous versions of OS X, go to System Preferences and click on Dashboard and Expose.
Mac 101: Easily show the user Library folder in Lion
More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice Mac users. Those of you who've explored your Finder a little bit in OS X 10.6 or prior might have noticed a folder in your user folder called "Library." The Library folder houses all sorts of files needed to keep your user account running smoothly. Many of these files are created automatically by apps on your Mac -- like preferences and settings on how you want a certain app to look or run. Other files inside the Library folder include screen savers and widgets and, well, a ton of things you'll never need to worry about but are pretty much essential to having a healthy Mac. In OS X 10.7 Lion Apple decided to hide the user's Library folder (although not the root Library folder on the top level of the hard drive). The primary reason Apple did this is so users couldn't easily go into the folder and delete important files needed by apps or OS X itself. This became all the more important after Apple introduced the Mac App Store. Files inside the Library folder allow you to delete an app, then re-download it at a later date while retaining all the settings it had the last time it was on your Mac. If you want to see the contents of the Library folder, there are actually several ways to do it; for simplicity's sake, we're going to show you the easiest, non-techie way, courtesy of the folks at CreativeBits: In the Finder, select the Go menu from the menu bar at the top of your screen. You'll notice a list of folders across your system such as Desktop, Downloads, Home, etc. While the Go menu is displayed, hold down the option key on your keyboard. Like magic, the Library folder will appear between the Home and Computer folders. Click on it to open a Finder window displaying all of the files inside your Library folder. Again, if you're not too familiar with the contents of the Library folder it's best to leave what's in there alone. However, it doesn't hurt to explore the folder and see how some essential files are arranged and stored on your system.
Mac 101: Additional tips for OS X Lion's Mission Control
TUAW's Dave Caolo did an in-depth look at OS X Lion's new window/application manager, Mission Control, the day of OS X Lion's launch. If you're completely confused about Mission Control's features, Dave's post is a good place to get a baseline of knowledge on this new feature. In this post, I'll be covering two additional features of Mission Control that will help alleviate some of the confusion associated with it, especially if you're used to the way Spaces worked in earlier versions of Mac OS X. Tip 1: Assigning applications to a specific Desktop Mac OS X Snow Leopard had a preference pane in System Preferences that allowed you to assign applications to a particular Space. Unfortunately, Mission Control's preference pane in OS X Lion has no such feature, which has led to a lot of confusion amongst users who were comfortable with Snow Leopard's method of assigning apps to Spaces. It turns out this feature hasn't vanished altogether in OS X Lion, but it has been moved to a somewhat less "discoverable" location. It's also less configurable than the preference pane setup Spaces had in Snow Leopard, but that may actually be of benefit to novice users. First, use Mission Control to navigate to the Desktop you want your application to be assigned to. Once there, right click the Dock icon for the application you want to assign -- if the application isn't one you normally keep in the Dock, you'll need to launch the app first. After right clicking the app's icon, you'll see a contextual menu pop up. On this menu, under Options, you'll see a submenu called "Assign To" with three different options: All Desktops, This Desktop, or None. "All Desktops" is just that; the app will follow you around no matter which Desktop you're using. "This Desktop" will "pin" the app and its windows to your current Desktop, both now and for all future launches of the application. You can still move windows between Desktops manually if you desire, but by default they'll open in the assigned Desktop. The third option, "None," is the default; applications aren't assigned to any particular Desktop, will simply launch in whichever one you're currently using, and will stay there when you navigate to a different Desktop. Assigning applications to a particular Desktop can help a lot in keeping things organized. I'll offer my own setup as an example: Desktop 1: Safari, Echofon, Mail, iChat -- My main Desktop gets all my communication tools assigned together. Desktop 2: Aperture, Photoshop -- All my photo editing apps in one spot. Desktop 3: Pages, Keynote, Numbers -- I have this desktop set aside for "Productivity" apps. Desktop 4: iMovie, Handbrake -- This Desktop is devoted to video editing/transcoding apps. All Desktops: Finder -- Obviously I don't want to move to a different Desktop every time I need to dive into the file system. This may not be true for all users migrating from Snow Leopard, but my Spaces preferences from Snow Leopard carried over to Lion, so I didn't have to re-assign any applications after upgrading. Tip 2: Assign a different wallpaper to each Desktop A feature I always wanted to see in Snow Leopard's Spaces was the ability to assign different background pictures to each Space in order to make them visually distinctive. Without that, it was sometimes difficult to tell which Space I was in. This feature has found its way into OS X Lion, and it's quite simple to set up, especially if you already know how to change your desktop background (easy to find in System Preferences under "Desktop & Screen Saver"). To simplify things, first assign System Preferences to "All Desktops" using the tip above -- this will save you some headaches if you're changing multiple Desktop backgrounds at once. Then, navigate to the Desktop whose background you want to change. Once there, change the background in System Preferences. Simple. Using different backgrounds for each of your Desktops will make navigating between them in Mission Control much easier -- especially since Apple hasn't yet implemented any way to rename Desktops. Hopefully these two tips will help you get more out of Mission Control than you would otherwise. The feature is above all meant to help you organize things and make them easier to navigate, but it does take some tweaking to get Mission Control to realize its full potential.
Mac 101: Capture your signature using OS X Lion's Preview app
OS X Lion has made signing PDFs easier than ever before. It's been possible to scan in your handwritten signature and sign documents in earlier versions of Mac OS X, but it was a complex process and one most people probably never trifled with. More often than not, I found it easier to simply print out the document, sign it the normal way, and scan the whole document back into Preview using my flatbed scanner. Lion's version of Preview comes with a built-in signature scanner that makes signing documents far simpler. In the Annotations toolbar you now have an option to create a signature from your Mac's built-in iSight camera. All you need to do is use black ink to sign a piece of white paper, align your signature toward the camera using the onscreen guides, and take a snapshot of the signature. (I haven't used my real signature here, obviously.) Preview can store multiple signatures, so if you need to both sign and initial documents, you're able to do so easily using Preview's annotation functions. It's a great feature, and one that ensures my printer will be gathering even more dust than it already has. [Just to be clear, this process only applies a graphical representation of your signature; it does not cryptographically 'sign' the PDF document to ensure that it has remained unmodified. Adobe's Acrobat application can sign PDFs with both a graphic and a digital signature; NitroPDF also has this feature, as does the DocQ web service. The DocuSign web service provides 'electronic signatures,' which are not exactly the same thing either. –Ed.] One step closer to a truly paperless office
Mac 101: Should I upgrade my Mac or buy a new one?
"Should I upgrade the Mac I have or buy a new one?" It's a question that faces every one of us at some point, and it's not always easy to answer. In a lot of cases, owning a Mac can complicate this answer simply because the darned things are so long-lived. It's a lot easier to justify replacing some $500 Dell econobox after a few years, since it's probably got one foot in the grave by that point anyway, but I've known people who happily trundle along on Mac hardware that's nearly a decade old. In fact, I used to be one of those people; my first Mac was a 1998 PowerBook G3 that I bought used in 2004 and used until 2007. I'm facing that "upgrade or buy new" question myself right now. Installing OS X Lion on my Early 2008 MacBook Pro has made it clear my hardware isn't humming along the way it used to. I've got a choice between throwing in another 2 GB of RAM and replacing my dog slow HDD with a much zippier SSD, or just ditching my current Mac altogether and replacing it with a current MacBook Air. Several factors are complicating my decision to upgrade or replace my current Mac, and these are pretty common questions that every Mac owner is going to have to answer for themselves eventually. I've worked out a decision path below that should help guide you in your choice. Note that this is only a recommendation; if you're perfectly happy chugging along on that OS X Tiger-running PowerBook G4 from 2004, don't let me stop you. But if you're like me and finding that your older hardware is getting in the way of your workflow, it's probably time to start asking the hard questions. I've broken things down in stages, based on the age of the Mac you have now. 0-2 years old: Consider upgrading your current hardware Any Mac this young is fully capable of running OS X Lion, and there's nothing stopping you from syncing it with the latest iOS devices other than keeping iTunes up to date. If your Mac is still covered under AppleCare, still runs all the applications you need to run, and isn't showing any signs of decrepitude, there's probably no real reason to buy a new one at this point. If you're finding your Mac is running a bit slower than you'd like, the best thing you can do for it is to throw more RAM in there. While OS X Lion's minimum RAM requirement is only 2 GB, I've found it suffers tremendous performance bottlenecks with that little RAM. Even the 4 GB I have in my Mac often doesn't feel like it's enough, especially since Safari seems to leak memory like a sieve. If your Mac can handle 8 GB of RAM, and you can handle laying out the money for it, then go for it. Contrary to popular belief, upgrading your Mac's RAM by yourself does not void your AppleCare warranty. Apple even includes instructions on how to self-upgrade the RAM in the instruction book that comes with your Mac, and they're also on Apple's support site. In most cases the only tool you'll need is a screwdriver. RAM upgrades are not complicated in the slightest, and if you're even moderately competent with tools, there's no reason to pay someone else to do it for you. The next best thing you can do for your Mac is upgrade its hard drive, though this is a more complicated procedure and one that's probably not going to be as easy to pull off on an iMac or Mac mini (if you can even do it at all). If your Mac came with a slower 4200 or 5400 RPM hard drive, like mine did, you may find that to be a huge performance bottleneck once your physical RAM fills up and OS X starts using your hard drive to supplement it with virtual memory. If the problem facing your hard drive is that it's running out of space, unless you have a Mac Pro (which makes swapping in a new drive trivial) I'd recommend buying an external drive instead of replacing the internal drive, especially if you have a MacBook or MacBook Pro. You can buy a hard disk with higher storage and replace it yourself on those models, but considering the price you'll pay for a laptop-class hard drive versus an external drive of the same or higher capacity, it's probably not worth it unless you vitally need a terabyte of data to follow you around everywhere. If you're like me and finding a traditional platter-based hard drive is too slow, swapping out your internal hard drive with a solid state drive (SSD) is a great way to see immediate and often startling improvements in data access speed on your system. The drives come with two obvious tradeoffs, however. First, they're extremely expensive, especially compared to a traditional hard drive; you can expect to pay US$400 or more for a decent 250 GB SSD. Second, these drives generally don't come in larger sizes unless you're willing to pay a huge premium. I find that I can get by just fine with 250 GB of storage on my internal drive, with the majority of my media housed on much larger external drives. That's why I'm considering replacing my current MacBook Pro's drive with a 256 GB SSD if I can't find a way financially to upgrade to the new MacBook Air instead, which also has an SSD in the same capacity. 2-4 years old: It's a tossup If your Mac is between two to four years old, the "upgrade or replace" question gets more complicated. A two-year old Mac should still be plenty fast and capable of running nearly all modern software without feeling bogged down, but the four- to five-year threshold is typically when Apple begins phasing out software support for older Macs. Putting more money into your current machine via upgrades makes more sense toward the beginning of this cycle, but toward the end of it you may find the money is better spent on getting a new Mac instead. Resale value on Macs is typically higher than that on PCs, but the market value for your Mac does start to drop precipitously after the second year. If you're like me and you can't afford to buy a new Mac unless you can sell the old one first, it might be a good idea to consider selling your current Mac around the two-year mark, especially if you purchased additional AppleCare coverage. Having an additional year of warranty coverage available to potential buyers will be a huge point in your favor should you choose to sell your Mac. If you can get fair market value for your machine (after 2 years, typically 40-50 percent of what you initially paid for it, depending on the model and its condition), selling your current Mac every two years may mean you'll wind up paying full price for a new Mac only once every four years or so. A lot of the savvier Mac owners out there go through this biennial selloff, and if you can afford to outlay around 50 percent of the cost of a brand-new Mac every two to three years, this is definitely the route I'd recommend most if you're interested in keeping your hardware up to spec with Apple's latest software. After your Mac is over three years old and has no AppleCare coverage, getting a decent resale price becomes much harder. And, given my personal experience with Apple's notebooks, I don't recommend running around with an out-of-warranty MacBook for any longer than you have to. Once the warranty coverage expired on my current Mac, the only thing that's held me back from replacing it with a new one is the fact that I can't afford to. In my case, I'm kind of stuck because I waited too long to sell my current Mac, which is now 3.5 years old. I've tried to sell off my Mac already, but thus far I haven't received any offers that even come close to the fair market value for it. Since I can't afford a new Mac, but my current Mac's performance no longer meets my needs, I basically have to upgrade my existing hardware if no one makes me a fair offer for it first. Learn from my example: if you even suspect that your Mac is going to be too slow for your needs after three years, consider selling it off well before it gets to that point. 4 years+: Buy a new Mac I recently had a reader ask if it was worth upgrading his iBook G4 to Leopard so he could update iTunes and sync his ancient Mac with a newly purchased iPad 2. I said no, for several reasons. First, his machine is over six years old, and as a PowerPC machine, its maximum possible OS version is now two major revisions behind. Throwing more money at that machine makes even less sense when you consider that the iPad 2's benchmarking scores are almost exactly the same as the iBook he'd be syncing it with! If your Mac is more than four years old, and you're finding it too slow for your needs, it's about time to buy a new one. Sure, you can buy more RAM or a faster drive for it, but should you? The only way I'd give a "yes" to that answer is if you simply flat-out cannot afford to get a new machine. At four years old, your Mac will be over a year out of warranty, facing an increasingly dismal resale value and quickly approaching the end of its useful life as far as its ability to keep up with the latest software. What do I mean by that? OS X Lion runs on most Intel Macs, but not all. Many of the first-generation Intel Macs released in 2006 run on 32-bit architecture, and that's hardware which Lion no longer supports. Those earliest iMacs, Mac minis, MacBooks, and MacBook Pros are therefore stuck running Snow Leopard or earlier. That means those Macs have at most four or five years of remaining software support from Apple (i.e., security updates, iTunes support, and so forth) before they're considered obsolete and no longer supported at all. Released in 2009, OS X Snow Leopard was the first Intel-only version of OS X, meaning all Macs released before 2006 are only capable of running OS X Leopard or earlier. These older PowerPC-based Macs can likely expect to see support for even the most basic things such as iTunes updates vanish entirely sometime within the next few years. In 2007, Mac OS X Leopard dropped support for all PowerPC G3 Macs and all Macs with a G4 processor running slower than 867 MHz. That means with the exception of some of the more powerful Power Macs and PowerBook G4 models, virtually all Macs from 2002 or earlier (and even a few of the 2003 Macs) are incapable of running Leopard. If that trip down OS X Memory Lane shows anything, it's that once your Mac passes its fourth year, its days are numbered as far as Apple's concerned. I won't be surprised at all if the next major revision of OS X comes out in 2013 or 2014 and drops support for all pre-unibody models of the MacBook lineup. The inability to run the most current version of OS X on your hardware doesn't automatically mean your Mac is useless, but it does make things much more complicated for you than they need to be. The reader discussed earlier is just one example. Using a Mac released over six years ago, and still running an OS released in 2005, he found himself unable to sync his iBook with a new iPad 2 -- a machine that actually matches or outclasses his old Mac's performance in nearly every way. He can spend $130 or more to upgrade his obsolete Mac to Leopard and gain the ability to sync it with his new iPad, but is that $130 a wise purchase for a Mac whose maximum performance is substantially inferior to even the cheapest Macs available today? No way. If you find yourself at the point where your current hardware is no longer meeting your needs, the decision to upgrade or replace it is going to depend on your financial means and the age of your Mac. If I had my way, I'd buy a new MacBook Air today and send my current MacBook Pro to a nice country farm where it could frolic with the other old Macs in the sun all day long ... but since it looks like I waited too long to sell my Mac and get what I consider a fair price for it, I'm instead stuck spending money on upgrades to keep it chugging along for another year or two until I can afford to replace it. If you're at the two- to three-year point in your Mac ownership and finding it too slow for your typical usage, don't hesitate -- put that thing up for auction and start shopping for a new one, because it'll actually save you a lot of money in the long run.
Lion: Deleting apps in Launchpad, and starting clean
Launchpad in Mac OS Lion shares a key behavior with its iOS counterpart: deleting an app from the launcher also uninstalls it from the computer, as long as the app was purchased from the Mac App Store. Of course, it's quick and easy to redownload the MAS apps if they're needed. While this insta-delete, complete with jiggling icons, may be counterintuitive for longtime Mac users, it makes perfect sense to iPhone or iPad users where there's a one-to-one mapping between apps on the launcher screen and apps installed on the device. On other mobile platforms, that's not necessarily the case: both Android and Blackberry devices have the ability to hide or subset visible apps versus the full suite of installed programs. The flip side of this strong linkage between installation/removal and visibility of MAS apps in Launchpad is that non-MAS/conventionally installed apps cannot be deleted from the Launchpad UI. If you don't want all that app clutter, the only default options are to move the space-wasting apps into Launchpad folders (laborious) or move the apps themselves out of the Applications folder in the Finder (boneheaded, and actually won't work, per commenters). Even resetting your Launchpad (as Erica noted last week) still includes all your apps in the launcher's pages. There is another way, however, to blank out your Launchpad and start clean. Web developer Loren Segal points out the 'nuclear option' of deleting all the app records from the Launchpad database, which lets you select individual apps to include by dragging their icons onto the Launchpad dock icon (command-click to select multiple apps before dragging). He suggests backing up the relevant database file beforehand, in case of issues, and I concur. Here's the process in the Terminal, line by line: mkdir ~/Desktop/DB_Backup [makes a folder on your desktop to back up the data files] cp ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db ~/Desktop/DB_Backup/ [copies the database] sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db 'DELETE FROM apps;' && killall Dock sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db 'DELETE from apps;' \ ' DELETE from groups WHERE title<>""; DELETE from items WHERE rowid>2;' \ && killall Dock [deletes the app records from Launchpad's database, and restarts the Dock process; you'll see your minimized windows pop back to the screen. Update: Loren posted a new version, as above, that fixes the folders issue.] Blank Launchpad! You may notice that any folders previously in Launchpad will still be there, albeit vacant. To get rid of them, simply load at least one app into Launchpad, then drag the app into & out of the folder. It will 'evaporate' when it's empty. If you do decide that you prefer the full-list Launchpad, you can either restore the database to its original location, or follow the tip in Erica's post to reset/rebuild and get all your apps back.
Mac 101: OS X Lion's new window resizing features
In all versions of Mac OS X prior to Lion, re-sizing a window meant either clicking the green "traffic light" button in the upper left corner or clicking and dragging the bottom right corner. Windows switchers in particular have found this a frustrating departure from the behavior in other operating systems, where you can generally resize a window from any edge. Switchers (and the rest of us) can rejoice now that OS X Lion is out, because in Lion you can resize a window from anywhere along its edges, not just the bottom right corner. Simply point your mouse pointer along a window's edge, and it should change to two opposing arrows indicating the direction in which the window can be resized. Clicking and dragging a window's horizonal or vertical edge will resize it horizontally or vertically. As in earlier versions of OS X, clicking and dragging along the corners will allow you to resize the window in both dimensions at once. Also new to OS X Lion are optional modifier keys while resizing a window, as described by developer Daniel Jalkut. Holding down the Option key while resizing will cause the window to expand in equal dimensions on both sides at once; in other words, holding Option and dragging one horizontal edge will cause both horizontal edges of a window to "grow" simultaneously. Holding the Shift key while resizing will cause the window to retain its current proportions while resizing, so if you have a window that's perfectly square or a 4:3 rectangle, it will stay that shape even as you shrink it or make it bigger. That may come in particularly handy if you do a lot of graphics work on your Mac and want to keep your windows' proportions constrained when resizing images. This is not to be confused with the double arrows you may see in the top right corner of certain apps' windows, like Safari, Mail, or iPhoto. Those arrows activate full-screen mode for the application and cause it to fill your Mac's screen. If you activate this feature accidentally, reverting the window to its original size is easy. Move your mouse pointer toward the upper-right corner of your screen, and the menubar should roll down, revealing a blue icon with white arrows facing each other. Click that icon to exit full-screen mode and restore your window to its original size.
Mac 101: Using Keychain Access to remember the password you forgot
One of the unsung joys of being a Mac consultant is getting emails from clients with problems that aren't critical enough warrant a billable office visit but still need attention. This morning, I heard from client who needed to add two Macs onto the office AirPort network but couldn't remember the password. Here's how she (and you) can retrieve that password. Most of the time when Mac users are asked to create a password on the Mac, there's a small check box just below asking if you want to "store the password on the keychain." If you're like many Mac users, you're not really sure what that means but you check the box anyway. What it does mean is that the password is then stored in the Mac's keychain, which is Apple's password management system that has been around since the days of Mac OS 8.6. Fortunately, Apple provides an application that you can use to find out what password you used three years ago and have since forgotten. It's called Keychain Access, and it is tucked away in the Utilities folder that resides in your Applications folder. Hint -- if you're not familiar with the Utilities folder, there's a quick way to get to it from the Finder menu bar. Just select Go > Utilities to open a Finder window filled with all sorts of fun apps, from the handy (and dangerous) Disk Utility to the under-appreciated X11. I told my client to launch Keychain Access and then click on the "login keychain" in the list of keychains on the left side of the app window. A list of passwords appears, one of which has a "kind" of "AirPort network password." Double-clicking that entry brings up a dialog similar to the one shown below: See where it says "show password"? A click on the checkbox next to that brings up a dialog that asks for the keychain password, which is generally the administrator password on your Mac. Enter that password and click OK, and you may be asked to enter the password once again. Once that's done, the password should auto-magically appear in the field next to "show password." This trick has worked many times for me when my clients have forgotten a password or misplaced the Post-It Note that they wrote it on. Hopefully it will help out some TUAW readers as well.
Mac 101: Using Keynote as Motion in a bind (Updated)
Update: KeynoteUser.com notes that it's easy to export your Keynote animations with an alpha channel, making it much simpler to work with them in pro editing apps or in Motion. On this trip to WWDC I packed light. One backpack, a MacBook Air and a camera light. I haven't had my Air for very long, and I've been trying to install only essential software on it and see what I can do without. I've been impressed enough with iMovie's capabilities (once you get past what I consider to be a terrible UI), so I didn't bother loading Final Cut Studio. I forgot, however, to whip up some "bumpers" (intro/outro) for our videos before I left. I'm used to using Apple's Motion to handle that, but I found myself looking for an easy alternative. The solution I found was Keynote, and a grand solution it is. I'm certain many of our intrepid readers have used this method in the past, but it was new to me. If you've never used Keynote, think of it as PowerPoint on a type of steroids that automatically make presentations not look like steaming piles of bullet points. With the animation and build tools available in the object inspector, I was able to drag in a couple of logos, type a little text and create a five-second intro in about five minutes. I created the whole thing in one frame, easily timed and sequenced the animations and output a QuickTime file ready to drop into iMovie. I have to say, the process was a thing of beauty. Below is a sample of the results, created in Keynote and soundtracked in GarageBand. I won't claim they're genius, but it was a surprisingly elegant solution in a pinch. Even if you never use higher-end production tools, keep Keynote in mind next time you need custom titles or video intros. Combine it with some loops in GarageBand and have some stylish video ready to go in just a few minutes. You can grab Keynote in the Mac App Store as a standalone app for US$19.99.
iTunes 101: Making the most of contextual menus
I love contextual menus. In Mac OS X, you find them when you right-click, two-finger-click (on a trackpad) or when you hold down the Control key and click. They're handy in scores of applications and in the Finder; if you're looking to supercharge your iTunes usage in particular, Macworld's Kirk McElhearn has published 10 ways to use contextual menus with iTunes. One particularly useful option is to "Start Genius" from any track. When selected, iTunes will instantly create a genius playlist from that track. The "Add to playlist" option is also useful. When selected, you get a hierarchical menu all available playlists (smart playlists are excluded). Simply click the one you're after and the track is added. Contextual menus also work on multiple tracks at once. Make your selections by either Command- or Shift-clicking, then right-click one of the highlighted songs to see the contextual menu. From there you can add that group to a playlist, adjust ratings, convert tracks to Apple Lossless format, and so on. There's an important iTunes contextual menu that didn't make Macworld's list. If you connect your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad to your computer, you can right-click the device's icon in the iTunes sidebar to see a specific contextual menu for that iOS gadget. You can quickly eject, restore or back up your device; also, if you're about to update your version of iOS but iTunes is warning you that you need to transfer purchased items from your device back to iTunes pre-update... well, here's where you do it, via the Transfer Purchases command. For all ten Macworld tips, read Kirk's article. In the meantime, please share any favorites with us below.
Mac 101: Six steps for tracking down hard drive space hogs
More Mac 101, our ongoing series of tips, tricks and helpful hints for new Mac users and curious veterans. "Your startup disk is almost full." This simple sentence can trigger all the stages of grief: denial ("That can't be right!"), anger ("This is a 500 GB drive!"), bargaining ("If I delete the podcasts, will you let me download the new iOS update?"), depression ("Ugh, this is going to take all day. Am I going to have to replace my hard drive?") and acceptance ("I can fix this!"). Before you rush out to buy a new hard drive, here are six simple (and free) steps that may help you reclaim "lost" hard drive space.
Mac 101: Quick navigation of browser tabs
If you ever use the tabs in your web browser, you may have a hard time navigating between them as you take your hand off the keyboard, put it on your mouse, click on the tab you're looking for, look at that page for a moment and then click back on the first tab again. As a person who has loads of tabs open all the time for researching all kinds of things, going back and forth like this is pretty inefficient. Luckily, two major browsers for the Mac (that is Firefox and Chrome) offer a very handy method for going from tab to tab: Pressing Command and any of the number keys will take you to that tab. So Cmd+3 will take you to the third tab across, Cmd+9 to the ninth, etc. (although in Chrome, Cmd+9 will take you to the last tab, no matter what). This makes it easy to go from tab 2 to tab 7, for example. In Safari, however, Cmd+1 will take you to the first item in the Bookmarks Bar, located under the URL and Search bar. [Updated with some corrections, thanks commenters! - Ed.] Now for people who have way more than nine tabs open (like me), it's also a good idea to learn the keyboard commands to flip to the next or previous tab in your browser of choice. Firefox, Chrome: Command+Option+Arrow (left or right) Safari: Command+Shift+Arrow (left or right) If you want your tabs in a different order, you can drag the tabs around to rearrange them however you'd like, and then use the keyboard commands to flip between them. You don't have to learn all the available keyboard commands all at once, but if you can add a couple here and there, you can do a lot to streamline your workflow.
Mac 101: Pronouncing Mac OS X
In our Mac 101 series, TUAW introduces basic OS X concepts to new Mac users. This is going to be a quick one, because there's not too much to it -- but it's a critical note when talking to other people in your newly adopted community. Editor's Note: Please keep your comments civil and relevant. Remember that Mac 101 is aimed at novice users, not the grizzled Mac veterans who clearly are going to keep pronouncing things however the heck they want. Off-topic or abusive comments will be deleted; repeat offenders will be banned. It's pronounced "Oh. Ess. Ten," not "Oh. Ess. Ex". (Yes, Apple has a KB article on this point.) Mac OS X is a Unix-based operating system with roots reaching back to the Mach project at Carnegie Mellon and the NeXTStep OS in the late 1980's -- NeXT was a spin-off corporation founded by Steve Jobs during his exodus from Apple. Mac OS X was the version following Mac OS 9, even though the two systems are entirely different under the hood. The "X" is the Roman Numeral for ten. It may look a little redundant when written out, but when you see "OS X 10.6.6", you can say "Oh. Ess. Ten. Point. Six. Point Six." or even "Oh. Ess. Ten. Six. Six." It's perfectly okay to drop the second ten.
How the Mac App Store works, and get Twitter for Mac free
The new Mac App Store is online, and ready for you to use. It's an incredibly simple way to find, install, and manage your favorite software. First of all, to see the Mac App Store at all, you'll need to run your Software Updates (under the Apple menu) and get Mac OS X 10.6.6 System Update, or run the combo update you can download here. After you reboot, you'll see a new icon in your dock, right after the Finder icon. Click that to launch the app store. If you don't want it taking up dock space, you can also get to the Mac App Store through the Apple menu, right under Software Update. The app store looks and works almost exactly like the iPad App Store, featuring the same home page of new and popular apps. Most apps cost less than you may have seen them at retail, but some, like Things, are priced higher than we've seen them in bundles. In the Gallery accompanying this post, you can walk through getting the much-anticipated Twitter for Mac app. The release was teased yesterday and showed up on time early this morning. As expected, the app is free. Its predecessor -- known as Tweetie before its developer was acquired by Twitter -- hadn't been updated in quite a while, so folks looking for Tweetie 2 will want to check this out. Check out all of the steps to installation in the gallery below. We'll have an in-depth review of Twitter for Mac up soon. Enjoy! %Gallery-112983%
Mac 101: Finding App Store on your Mac
This morning it was all "Where's Waldo?" on my computer as I hunted and hunted for the new app store after spending far too much time updating my system. It turns out that I don't need to upgrade my glasses, just my recognition skills. The new App Store icon is automatically installed into your Dock under 10.6.6, just to the right or below the OS X finder icon, into the second slot on your Dock. App Store is an application, just like most of the other items in the top or left portion of your Finder Dock. Removing it from the Dock adds a little room back into your applications collection -- and you can do this without losing access to it from Finder. The secret is that App Store is built right into the Apple menu at the top-left of your finder window. Why take up precious Dock space when you can get to the app so easily? If you're looking to conserve space in your Dock (and, frankly, what Dock-aholic isn't), you can easily remove it and still find it when needed. To remove App Store, just drag it out from the dock into the finder. You'll be rewarded by a lovely visual poof and an accompanying sound effect. Of course, if you change your mind and decide that you want App Store back in your dock, just hop into your Applications folder and drag the icon from the folder window right back over into the dock.
iPhoto 101: How to delete photos
Whether your Mac contains a mechanical hard drive or an SSD, everyone needs more space. We're all used to dumping Finder's trash frequently to reclaim drive space, but what some of you might not know is that when you delete pictures from iPhoto, they remain on your computer since iPhoto has its own trash. If you've never done this, you may have hundreds (or for that matter, thousands) of pictures or videos in iPhoto that are just clogging up your drive. There are two ways to delete the iPhoto trash. One way is to just right click on the word Trash in iPhoto's menu bar, and select Empty Trash. The other, and possibly more telling way, is to single click on the word Trash in the menu bar. You'll be presented with all the unnecessary photos and videos along with the total number held in trash. On the top right is an Empty Trash button that will delete them completely. In both cases, you'll be presented with a warning message asking you if you really want to do this. Click OK, and you'll get back some space. If you've never done this, the amount reclaimed can be dramatic, but if you are in the habit of doing this, you won't get back all that much. I deleted 82 pictures, and my hard drive space increased from 97.23 GB to 97.26 GB. See how much you can get back. [via Lifehacker]
Mac 101: Backup basics with Time Machine and more
Did you get a new Mac for Christmas? Before you go too far in loading your Mac with software and files, make sure that you have a backup strategy. As a certified Mac consultant, I can tell you that there are two kinds of computer users: those who have lost data through error, hardware failure, or accident, and those who are going to lose data in the future. Most of the bloggers at TUAW are backup fanatics, and many of us have multiple backups using Time Machine (the backup app built into Mac OS X), cloning applications like Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper!, and online backup services like Carbonite, Mozy, and BackBlaze. In this edition of Mac 101, I'll take you through the basics of setting up your Time Machine backup to a local hard drive, explain the power of cloning apps, and tell you why off-site backups are a good idea.
Mac 101: Securing your passwords after the Gawker breach
Thanks to questionable security practices at Gawker Media (publishing parent of many high-profile websites including Gizmodo and Lifehacker), a number of people are busy scrambling to change their passwords on a lot of different sites today. Gawker stored encrypted passwords on its servers instead of password hashes (and stored those passwords using the deprecated DES standard), so as a result of some weekend hacking, a lot of email addresses and passwords were stolen. Gawker Media is asking anyone who uses its comment system to change their password immediately, and if they used the same email address and password on other websites, they should change those passwords as well. If you have used any of the Gawker sites in the past, you can use Slate's Gawker Hack widget to determine if your email address and password was part of the group that was compromised. Some other sites like LinkedIn are proactively disabling the accounts of users who were included in the data dump, requiring them to reset their passwords before they can get back in. Common sense dictates that for the best security, every website account should have a separate password; you should never use a dictionary word, birthday or family name as your password; strong passwords always need a mix of capitals and lowercase letters, numbers and (if acceptable to the service you're logging into) punctuation/non-alphanumerics. (The number of people who used 'password' or '123456' as their comment login in the Gawker system is truly shocking.) However, our puny human brains don't work well with strong passwords; we just can't remember a lot of passwords that are random gibberish, and even using mnemonics and other tricks for password generation can fill up the ol' brain pretty quickly. There are some ways to generate strong passwords that are associated with just one website -- and keep them recorded securely on your Mac or in the cloud -- so click that Read More link to see how.
