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Go completely wireless with your Laptop and iPhone

A feature that people commonly miss when they get an iPhone is tethering, also known as the end of ever having to pay for expensive internet at airports and hotels. Or, how about enjoying the beautiful spring weather by doing some work outdoors?

Tethering is one of those features that just makes sense, yet it only became mainstream when Apple announced that the iPhones were going to support it last summer. It allows you to connect your laptop to the internet via your iPhone, much like the USB dongles you buy from your operator today but without the additional contract and, well, the dongle.

To make it even better, Apple has made the setup surprisingly simple, just activate the feature on your iPhone, then connect via either USB or Bluetooth and you’re ready to go.

Want to try it out? To do it via USB, which gives you a faster connection and lets your computer charge the phone while you’re using it, simply connect your phone to your laptop. Next, go to Settings on your iPhone, press General and then Network. About halfway down you’ll find a button called “Internet Tethering”, press the button and then flick the switch to enable tethering. Voila, you are now browsing via your phone!

To go completely wireless you can also share the connection from your phone via Bluetooth. It works in the same way as via USB, but it includes a few more steps to enable and pair the laptop and iPhone via Bluetooth. Don’t worry though, you will only have to do it the first time!

To do the one time setup, enable Bluetooth on your iPhone by going to Settings, General, Bluetooth and making sure the switch is on. While you’re in the settings make sure you also enable tethering. After activating Bluetooth and tethering, go back to the Bluetooth menu and leave the iPhone there for now. This allows your computer to find the iPhone which is what we are doing next.

Head over to your Mac, open System Preferences and click the Bluetooth icon. First, make sure that Bluetooth is enabled (the checkbox On is ticked) and the “Show Bluetooth status in the menu bar” checkbox is checked, then have a look at the left side of the window. This shows a list of all Bluetooth devices you have used with your computer, and below it is a small button with a Plus sign. Press that button and follow the instructions to pair your computer with the phone.

Great! Your phone is now setup and paired with your computer. From now on, whenever you want to use tethering just enable it on the iPhone, then click the Bluetooth icon in the menubar on your Mac. In the menu that pops up, select your iPhone, then Connect to network and you’re online!

A few notes to keep in mind:

1.It isn’t always free. The cost varies from operator to operator so make sure you double check it before activating it. Also, if you are from the US, AT&T still does not support tethering. However, Google might help you find a way to enable it anyway!

2. Tethering can drain batteries quite quickly! That’s why we recommend using the USB cable instead, it gives you both a faster connection and it charges your phone.

3. If you prefer to be completely wireless, try disabling Airport while your phone is connected via Bluetooth. This saves power on your laptop and can sometimes solve the odd connection problem you might encounter.

Fix a burned in screen

Sadly, after all these years, screen burn-in is one of those problems Apple’s clever engineers haven’t been able to solve yet. Screen burn-in is what happens if you leave something on the screen for too long, after which you’ll see a ghost image of what was displayed before. This can easily be prevented by using screen savers or by automatically putting the display to sleep (which also saves some power), but what do you do if your screen is burned in already?

The solution is surprisingly simple, all you need is a completely white picture that you leave on screen for as long as the image was burned in. Say you left your computer on overnight and came back to find that iTunes has been burned into your screen. To fix it, just put a white image on the next night and by the time you wake up in the morning it should all be gone!

To make life a little easier we created some white images in the most common aspect ratios, you can download them here. To use them as full screen images open them with Preview, then select Slideshow from the View menu. When you put the image on make sure you get the right aspect ratio (the image must fill the screen completely, otherwise you’ll burn in black borders instead!). How do you know which aspect ratio you need? Simple, all of Apple’s Intel-based computers are 16:10, except for the new 27” iMac which is 16:9. Older Macs are normally 4:3.

Troubleshooting a Slow or Crashy Mac

Today we decided to make a guide to help you solve the two most common complaints people have: “my computer is slow” or “my computer/this application keeps on crashing”. There’s a good chance this could save you a trip to the Genius Bar so give it a try before you call Apple!


Verify your hard disk

First up, the most important thing to check is your hard disk. A failing or corrupt hard drive can cause a lot of very unexpected crashes and problems so if this is the culprit you need to deal with it as soon as you can to avoid loosing your data. Fortunately it is very easy to check the disk, just open up Disk Utility (it’s in the Utilities folder in Applications) and select the disk in the left hand pane. Next, press Verify Disk under the First Aid tab and within a few minutes Disk Utility will tell you whether the disk is ok or not. If everything is fine you can skip the rest of this section and move on the next step, Identify the problem.




If there is a problem with the disk, you’ll notice that it can’t be repaired while you are using it so you have to restart your computer and boot up using the Mac OS X Install DVD that came with your computer. To do this, just put the DVD in the Superdrive, reboot your computer and hold the Alt (Option) key while it is starting. When OS X shows you a list of drives you can start from, pick the DVD and wait until it has booted. From the Utilities menu, you’ll be able to choose Disk Utility and do the same thing again, only this time it will allow you to repair the disk. If the repair fails or Disk Utility keeps reporting errors on the disk you most likely have a physically damaged hard drive in which case the only solution is to backup your data immediately and take it to Apple for a replacement.

It might also be worth checking out Disk Warrior or TechTool Pro, two paid alternatives to Disk Utility. Disk Warrior is generally better at repairing and optimizing a corrupt disk while TechTool Pro can run a full surface scan which will tell you if the disk is physically damaged or not.


Identify the problem

Now that we have ruled out the most urgent problem we can start the actual troubleshooting. First up, check that you have at least 1 GB free on your hard disk. It sounds like a simple thing but you’d be surprised by how slow and weird Mac OS X can get when it runs out of disk space. Also try to disconnect all external devices you have connected, faulty external drives can cause Time Machine to crawl to a halt for example.

Next, we need to find out if the problem is related to your user settings or a problem with the Mac OS X install. To do this, create a new user account on your computer by going to System Preferences and then click Accounts. In the left pane you’ll see a Guest Account, select it and ensure that “Allow guests to log in to this computer” is checked (if all the settings are grayed out, click the padlock in the bottom left corner to unlock them). After this, close all your program and log out, then log in with the new guest account and see if the problem persists.

If the problem is gone it is likely due to a corrupt settings file in your user account so log back in to your normal account, then read go to the next step “Fixing a user problem” for some ideas. Otherwise, the problem is likely related to your Mac OS X install so skip to “Fixing a broken Mac OS X Install” for more help!


Fixing a user account problem

The trouble here is that a problem with an individual user account can be caused by a large number of things so the best we can do is give you some pointers to where to start and how to find out what may be causing it. The first thing is to decide if it is a system wide problem or if it is just an individual application which is acting up.

If it is only one application that is buggy, it could be due to a corrupt plist file. plists are preference files for applications and on the odd occasion they may become corrupt. If the application can’t deal with this it sometimes leads to a crash or unexpected behaviour which can make the entire application unusable. To solve it, open Finder and in your user’s folder go to Library then Preferences. In here you will find hundreds of files named as com.CompanyName.Application.plist, so for example if I have a problem with iPhoto the file I am looking for is com.apple.iPhoto.plist. Find the one that corresponds to your application and temporarily move the file to the desktop, then launch the application and see if the problem has disappeared.

You can also automate this using Cocktail by making it automatically verify the preferences, but remember that a file might check out in Cocktail yet still contain data that the application doesn’t expect.

If the problem occurs in other applications too it might be related to corrupt fonts or it might after all be related to a more serious problem with the Mac OS X install. Open Font Book in Applications and select all the fonts, then choose Validate Fonts from the File menu. Font Book will likely report some minor problems but if you receive an error make sure you at least temporarily remove the font causing it.


Fixing a broken Mac OS X Install

Problems with OS X can usually be related back to two main things, either a corrupt system file or incorrect hardware settings. The easiest way to make sure that your system is doing fine is to install the latest combo update from Apple and then run Cocktail to repair the disk permissions. We have written about this before so have a look here for more info!

If the problem is caused by corrupt hardware settings there are two more things to try, resetting the PRAM & NVRAM. It sounds scarier than it is, the PRAM & NVRAM is where OS X stores basic information such as the date and time, which startup disk it should use and so on. The process to reset it is slightly different for the various generations of Apple computers so have at the official Apple support document for more details.


Identifying Hardware Problems

The last thing to do before giving up is to verify that the hardware in your Mac is okay. Sometimes problems can be caused by faulty RAM memory or problems with the logic board so to test the components insert the Mac OS X Install DVD and reboot your computer. As it starts booting press and hold the D key until the Apple Hardware Test starts to load. For detailed instructions on how to use the Hardware Test refer to this Apple support document.

If the hardware test indicates that the RAM memory is faulty you should be able to find instructions on how to replace it in your computer’s manual without voiding the warranty. However, if the problem is related to any other component the only option is usually to hand over the computer to Apple.


Conclusion

In addition to this guide there are also a lot great Mac forums around the world where people are happy to help you solve problems with your computer. One of the best resources is the official Apple Discussion Forum but there are also a lot of other forums (many of them international so you can get help in your own language) so do have a look around!

iCal’s Hidden Setting

When you create a new appointment in iCal the default duration of the event is an hour, but what if you usually have 20 minute meetings? Apple doesn’t let you change this anywhere, however it does get annoying after a while so let’s see how we can change this.

The key here is that Mac OS X is packed with secret settings that can’t be modified through the normal preferences, instead they are edited using the Terminal application. For example, to change the default duration of new events in iCal, open the Terminal (you find it in the Utilities folder in Applications). In the Terminal, type the following and press enter:

defaults write com.apple.iCal 'Default duration in minutes for new event' 20

where 20 is the new duration in minutes. Now restart iCal to have the settings take effect and try it out by creating a new event. To restore the default iCal settings, run the same command but set the time to 60 minutes. Simple!

Stuck CD/DVD?

So that CD you wanted to copy to iTunes got stuck in your SuperDrive and no matter how hard you press the Eject button it won’t come out? Don’t worry, here are a few easy things to try before you drop off the computer at one of Apple’s Genius Bars.

The problem is usually that Mac OS X sometimes prevents a disc from being ejected if it thinks the disc is in use. To force Mac OS X to eject the disc anyway try this first: open Disk Utility, which you find in the Utilities folder inside Applications. In the left pane of the window there is a list of all the drives installed on your computer. One of them will look like a DVD, simply select it and press Eject in the toolbar.

If that didn’t work it is time to get a bit more technical. Quit Disk Utility and open Terminal this time, you find it in the same folder as Disk Utility. Now you are presented with what is probably the scariest thing known to most computer users, an empty terminal prompt. Don’t worry though, just type in the following, press enter and the disk should be ejected:

drutil tray eject

Still stuck? The next few solutions requires you to restart or shut down your computer so make sure you save everything you have open then reboot your computer. As soon as the computer starts up, before the Apple logo shows up, press the left mouse button or click the touchpad and keep it pressed until the disc is ejected. Failing that you can also try to hold the Alt (option) key immediately when the computer powers on. This will display all drives your Mac can start from, including the Superdrive. Select the DVD then press and hold the Eject button until the disc comes out.

For you guys with laptops there is one last thing to try before you give up. Turn off the laptop and put it in a cool place for a few minutes. After the computer has cooled down, switch it back on and immediately eject the disc using any of the methods we mentioned earlier.

If you have gotten this far without being able to eject the disc there is a good chance that it is physically stuck in the drive and won’t come out no matter how many times you try. Unfortunately the only solution in this case is to open the Superdrive, something you can’t do on your own without voiding your warranty. The best thing to do now is to book an appointment with Apple who should be able to get it out for you.

Flash Cookies

We have all heard about cookies in the web browser. You know the handy little bits of data websites can leave behind to remember your login details or favorite settings when you return next time? A few years ago there was a big discussion on whether these cookies should be allowed since they can be used to track users and their browsing habits, something many felt was a privacy invasion. Therefore web browser got tools to easily manage these cookies, web developers started to inform their users how their cookies were used and soon all was well on the internet again.

However, what many people don’t know is that “baddies” such as advertisers, spyware distributers and other shady websites quickly found a way to get around these issues using something virtually everyone has installed - Adobe Flash.

Before we move on, have a look at what is stored on your computer by visiting Adobe’s Website Storage Panel. Prepare to be amazed by how many websites have saved information about you. But what is this and why should you care?

Flash supports something known as Local Shared Objects which is the Flash equivalent of cookies. However, instead of the normal 4 kb limitation on cookies, their size can be up to 100 kb. They never expire, they will never be deleted automatically and by default they don’t have to ask for your permission to save all this data. To make things even worse, there is no easy way to delete them yourself; browsers are not aware that they exist so clearing cookies and history doesn’t help and Adobe has hidden the settings in a Flash app deep down on their website.

Doesn’t sound too good, does it? Fortunately you can delete individual cookies using the Website Storage Panel you tried out before or permanently disable them by going to the Global Storage Settings Panel and making sure the checkbox next to Allow third-party Flash content to store data on your computer is not ticked.

Now, the catch is that some of these bits of data actually serves a purpose and are in many cases used for good, such as reducing loading times of flash applications, so banning them may not be an ideal solution. Therefore we decided to update Cocktail to delete these cookies when you clear your internet caches. This will be enabled by default but you can change the settings by going to Preferences - Caches - Internet where you can also choose if it should clear only yours or every user’s cookies.

These features are available today in the latest version of Cocktail (Snow Leopard Edition) and within the week we’ll add support for it in the Leopard Edition too. Why don’t you go check it out?

Buy Cocktail, Help Haiti

Following the recent earthquake in Haiti, Maintain has decided to temporarily offer all customers a 30% discount on all licenses of Cocktail. During this period, 87% of all the revenues will be donated to a selected list of charities who actively help the people affected by this disaster. The sale will be on from Saturday (00:00 GMT) until Sunday (23:59 GMT) so make sure you take this opportunity to help out and get something great in return!

The donations will be split equally between:

• Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders
• Red Cross
• Save the Children
• UNICEF

The fine print: Proof of payment to the charities will be available from 25 February, 2010. The remaining 13% covers administrative fees such as transaction and retailer fees.

For more information about Cocktail, please visit http://cocktail.maintain.se.



"We have already collected around 50 000 dead bodies. We anticipate there will be between 100 000 and 200 000 dead in total, although we will never know the exact number." Paul Antoine Bien-Aime, Interior Minister

"Pictures can get out instantly, and so everybody can see and hear the pictures, and that's important because the world needs to know. But getting physically tonnes and tonnes of equipment, and food, and water is not as instant as Twitter or Skype or 24-hour television news. You can't snap your fingers and make it happen just by magic but we will do it, slowly and surely." Emilia Casella, U.N. World Food Programme

Be Safer by Backing Up Your Data Online

Hands up if you have ever done a backup! If you haven’t then go do one now, we’ll wait. Done? Good, let’s move on.

Today we wanted to talk about doing online backups, as there are several advantages to doing this compared to backing up to external hard drives. The obvious one is that you will be able to access your data no matter where you are in the world, so you will never forget a presentation again. Plus, you will never have to shuffle data between hard drives when you run out of space, just tell your provider that you need some more room and within minutes you have hundreds of gigabytes at your disposal.

To make things even better, Mac OS X makes backups much easier to deal with compared to Windows since all your settings are saved in just one place: your Home folder. This means restoring your computer is just a matter of restoring your Home folder. Magically, all emails, photos, documents, application settings (and licenses), wallpapers, screen savers and whatnot will be restored and your computer will behave exactly as it did before breaking down.

The convenience is nice but there is a much more serious issue with local backups, reliability. Tools such as Apple’s Time Machine are great since they don’t only back up your data but they also save older versions of files so that you can recreate them later. But what happens when your Time Machine drive fails? Well, you’ve lost half a year’s worth of files. Even worse, what happens if someone breaks in and steals your computer? Your data is gone forever.

This problem is solved by having remote backups, where data is always backed up at several locations to ensure that your data is safe no matter what happens. Unfortunately Time Machine doesn’t support this and it can take quite a bit of command line magic to set up at home (never mind convincing a friend to let you set up a server in his closet!), however there are several online services that will do this for you quickly and easily.

We have had a look at some of these services and picked our favorites. The main things we looked at is price and user friendliness, in other words how easy is it to set it and forget it? You could argue that speed is an issue, especially since the first backup can take weeks (!), but as soon as the first backup is done all of these services tend to be very fast. If you have to restore the entire backup most of these services offer to send you your data on a hard drives to save you the trouble of having to download tens of gigabytes.

CrashPlan - $54/year, unlimited

CrashPlan is a clear winner when it comes to simplicity. Download and install their software, then you’re literally a click away from backing up your entire Home directory. But don’t be fooled by the simplicity, CrashPlan is packed with a lot of useful settings and features. For example it supports alternative backup locations, so CrashPlan can back up your data online as well as to external hard drives, or even your friend’s computer. This feature also happens to be free, meaning if you can convince a friend you can get free remote backups without the hassle!

Mozy - $4.95/month, unlimited

Mozy is just about the cheapest option available at $4.95 a month for unlimited backups. The user interface is a bit cluttered but it lets you pick exactly which folders should be backed up as well as a certain type of data such as pictures. If you want to access files remotely you’ll have to ask Mozy to restore them from their backup, then wait for them to send you an email which contains a link that you download them. In addition to this, there is no way of remotely uploading files or sharing files. In other words: their online interface is a bit bulky.


Spideroak - $10/month, 100 GB

Spideroak is all about security and reliability, the data transferred between you and Spideroak is encrypted and will remain encrypted on their servers so that nobody except you will be able to access the files. On the software side it has a lot of configuration options to let you specify exactly what gets backed up, but the software is a bit slow sometimes. The online interface is pretty decent and it comes with a lot of options for sharing files using a service they call ShareRooms.

Backblaze - $5/month, unlimited

Backblaze is the only one we could find that has thoroughly integrated their software with Mac OS X. You find the settings in System Preferences, where you are presented with a user interface you’d think comes straight from Apple HQ. It is simple, clear and hides away exactly where you expect it to be when you’re not using it. However, when we wanted to know how long the backup would take we casually informed to “Relax... your data will be backed up in 84 days”!


These are just a few of all that are available, you could also have a look at some of these: Norton Online Backup, Carbonite, iDrive or maybe a combo of Apple Backup and Mobile Me?

While online backups have a plenty of advantages there are a few things to keep in mind, first, be patient as it is completely normal for the initial backups to take weeks to complete. The other issue is that the data is likely being transferred to servers in a different country (most of the services are based in the US) who may have different rules for how data can be accessed. Make sure you have a read through the provider’s privacy statement before you transfer top secret files!

Fix your Mac with Combo Updates

Did you know that many of the problems we are asked to solve can be traced back to a faulty system update or corrupt system files? While it may sound pretty serious there is usually a very simple way to fix it, reinstall the latest Combo update from Apple.

When Apple is testing Mac OS X updates with its developers they are using the Combo update, which is a package that contains every single update from the day your Mac OS X version was released. However, what they deliver to the end users is normally an incremental update which only contains the changes from say 10.6.1 to 10.6.2. Unless you have a clean install there is a chance that it will replace files it shouldn’t or, on the contrary, that it won’t replace files that have become corrupted and are now causing problems.

The best thing to do if you happen to experience these problems is to reinstall the update, but instead of using the built in Software Update utility which will only give you the incremental update you use the Combo update. The Combo update will replace all the core system files and give you a completely fresh and up to date Mac OS X install that will hopefully make your problems history.

This is also how you fix your computer if an update was interrupted as the Combo update will restore all missing files and make sure they are up to date.

You can download the Combo updates from Apple. It is generally a good idea to repair your permissions before and after installing the update. You can do this in Cocktail by going to the Disks section and selecting Permissions, or if you prefer you can use the built in Disk Utility which comes with Mac OS X. You find it in the Utilities folder in Applications, just select the drive you want to check and press Repair Disk Permissions under First Aid.

Improving QuickTime X

Have you upgraded to Snow Leopard only to find that the latest version of QuickTime appears to be quite basic? Well, we thought so too so we added a section in the Snow Leopard edition of Cocktail to tweak it a bit. Have a look at Interface - QuickTime X to see what you can do! Aside from our shameless advertising, let us show how you make the most of QuickTime X!

First up, have you ever tried to fast forward or rewind in QuickTime by clicking the buttons in the controller? Turns out it will increase the playback speed in steps of 2x, 4x, and 8x normal playback speed which can quickly get out of hand. However, if you hold the Option (Alt) key when fast forwarding or rewinding it will change in steps of 0.1x, making it much easier to control. If you listen to podcasts this is a great way to get through the podcast a little faster.

Even better, if you have a Mac with a multitouch trackpad you can drag left and right with two fingers to scrub through the movie and quickly find your favorite part.

Next, have you ever tried to open a video or audio file only to be told that QuickTime doesn’t support it? Apple has a good list of the video formats QuickTime supports but sadly it doesn’t include some of the most popular formats such as Windows Media or DivX. Fortunately there are two tools that will make QuickTime open and play virtually any media file you can find.

The first is Flip4Mac which lets you play Windows Media files that are commonly used to stream video online. The basic version is free and lets you play video files, however if you want to be able to create Windows Media files it costs anywhere from $29 to $179.

The other tool we highly recommend is Perian which appropriately calls itself “the swiss-army knife for QuickTime”. It adds support for a very impressive list of formats, including DivX and Flash movies. It will also add support for subtitles (.srt files) so the next time you watch a movie with subtitles they will show automatically.

While we are at it, did you know that you can also edit videos in QuickTime X? When playing a video or audio clip select Trim from the Edit menu (or press Command+T) and the controls turn into a timeline where you can trim your file. Now, say you want to extract a quote but don’t really know where it starts and ends? Simple, press and hold Option (Alt) and the timeline shows the sound levels in the clip instead!