In preparation for the coming of Snow Leopard, I decided to purchase a new external hard drive. My 500GB was full and I wanted to make sure I had both a Time Machine backup and a manual backup of my user folder before I do a clean install of Snow Leopard. So off I went to the nearest mall and got myself a 1TB external hard drive.
Now, I tried moving my Time Machine back up before from a 200GB hard drive to my 500GB and I thought it was just as simple as dragging the files and resuming it from …read more

Apple’s WWDC 2009 is underway and it opened with the keynote speech which featured some new Apple stuff. Below is a roundup of the notable items.
New MacBook Pro Lineup
I don’t think anyone saw this coming. At least not for this event. Apple just revamped it’s MacBook Pro line. Releasing an all new 15 inch MacBook Pro which now sports a similar battery to the 17 inch. Promising battery life of up to 7 hours. Another notable thing is the swapping out of the express slot with a SD card reader.
Another thing is that the MacBook Aluminum is now rebranded as …read more

I was helping setup a new MacBook for a friend of mine today. During the setup process OS X asked her to create an account and to assign a password to it. Everything went well and we were able to setup the Mac in no time at all.
However, when we were updating the OS and the computer asked for a password, it would not work. It kept saying that the password was wrong. Uh-Oh….
Good thing that there’s a reset utility found in the installation disc that ships with your Mac. For the times that you forgot your account password, …read more

[via TG Daily]
Apple is poised to release it’s latest version of OS X, dubbed Snow Leopard. While it won’t have any new whiz-bang features, it will still be a major upgrade as it focus greatly on performance improvements.
Snow Leopard is a 64-bit operating system which in theory will support up to 16TB or RAM. The OS will also take advantage of two new technologies, Grand Central and Open CL who will make significant improvements in speed and performance.
This is not to say that the technologies will make apps that much faster out of the box. Significant speed improvements will …read more

Most new switchers to Mac that I know ask me this question, “How do I defrag on a Mac?”.
Defrag on a Mac is known as optimization. Files on your hard drive can become fragmented over time. Due to the way OS X is built, there’s little need to optimize your HD. As such it hasn’t been really a practice for Mac users to do this. However if you’re really OC about these things, you can use apps such as Onyx to help you with your maintenance.
Here’s a good read from Apple’s support site regarding optimization.

Funny story.. My cousin calls me up a few nights ago. He was frantic. He said his business partner screwed up their MacBook. They couldn’t login to the MacBook because it wouldn’t accept the password. They kept trying and trying but to no avail. So he asked me if I could just try to recover their files and reinstall OS X. I said, bring the Mac over and let’s see.
So he brought the Mac today. I was set to have an afternoon filled with recovering data and reinstalling apps. So I looked at his Mac and it was booted …read more

Heads up to Leopard users. Apple released the latest update, 10.5.3. Get it via Software Update or through the standalone updater.
Quoting Apple’s support page
The Mac OS X 10.5.3 Update is recommended for Mac OS X 10.5, 10.5.1, and 10.5.2 Leopard. It includes general operating system improvements that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac. For detailed information about security updates, please visit this website. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is packed with over 300 new features, installs easily, and works with the software and accessories you already have.
For the complete details check out this support page. …read more

Here’s an interesting article from LifeHacker that talks about obscure functions of your Mac (OS X Leopard). These are things that you forgot that you can do with your Mac.
From saying phrases out loud, launching an application via Spotlight all the way to doubling as an external drive. These are just some things that your Mac can do but it may have skipped your mind or you didn’t know it could do.
Most of these are simple things that may or may not impact your Mac life greatly. Still, they’re fun to know and it will show how much of …read more

This is one app that really makes the iPhone/iPod Touch all the more enticing. Touchpad Pro allows you to control your computer via your iPhone or iPod Touch. Using VNC technology, your iPhone/iPod Touch can connect to your computer and act as a remote screen. You’re really seeing a version of your screen.
Here are some of the features of Touchpad Pro
1. Supports iPhone & iPod Touch
2. Connects with Windows, Mac, and anything running a VNC server
3. Control your computer’s mouse and keyboard wirelessly using your iPhone / iPod Touch
4. View your computer’s screen on your iPhone / iPod Touch …read more

The version of Preview that comes with Leopard has some great new features, especially the PDF capabilities. Tiger’s Preview only offered basic PDF capabilities. You could annotate and do other things with it. One way to workaround this was to get Adobe’s Acrobat Professional which is pretty expensive if you really don’t use it a lot or for business.
There’s a great article on MacWorld written by Kirk McElhearn. He gives 8 hidden Preview capabilities that will make you love Preview.
Here’s 8 reasons according to Kirk
1. Annotate PDFs
2. Delete and/or Rearrange PDF pages
3. Merge PDFs
4. Crop and Resize Images
5. Quickly Mask …read more