Optimal Layout is a great utility that fundamentally alters the way that I interact with my Mac. In short, it gives me the ability to use my keyboard to quickly change between windows.

That might sound like what you're been doing with ⌘ + Tab, but there are a few important differences. The first is that you can choose not only which app you are switching to, but also which window in that app. Optimal Layout can even switch you to specific browser tabs in Safari or Google Chrome.

You can use the mouse with Optimal Layout, but it works especially well for those who prefer the keyboard. Type ⌘ + Option/Alt + F and it will bring up a list of available windows. Start typing and it will match window names. When you find the one you want, simply press Return. This is especially great if you are on a Mac with a small screen or working in multiple full-screen apps, because you can switch between them without using ⌘ + Tab to find the app you want to use.

Optimal Layout is more than just an app/window switcher, it also lets you control the location of windows on the screen with your keyboard. You can maximize (full screen minus the Dock and menu bar), half-screen, quarter-screen, or center any window via the Optimal Layout UI, without bringing that application forward. Just type to find the window you want, and then press the keyboard command for where you want that window to go. Or you can use the menu bar controls (which can also be hidden, if you don't want them to appear) to control the front-most window. If that's not enough, there is even a grid that Optimal Layout can show you and help you position all of your windows on your screen if you need to see multiple windows at once.

The best way to understand Optimal Layout is to see it in action and try it yourself. There is a 94-second screencast on the Optimal Layout homepage, and a few other short screencasts on the support page. There's even a trial version available so you can try before you buy.

Optimal Layout is US$14 and is available on the Mac App Store or directly from the developer. It support Mac OS 10.5, 10.6, and 10.7.

Friday Favorite: Optimal Layout brings app switching and window controls to your fingertips originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

For the past few weeks, I have run into a problem with links to Apple.com coming up 404 "not found." Specifically, these have all been links to pages on http://support.apple.com/. For example, this morning I did a Google search for 10.7.3 combo. One of the first results was a link to http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1484 which came up 404.

Here's where it gets interesting: the link is only 404 in Safari. It works in Google Chrome and Firefox. If you reload the page in Safari (⌘ + R), it will load as usual. As if that wasn't strange enough, once it has loaded correctly, subsequent visits to pages at http://support.apple.com/ work fine... for a while. Then I will see the "We're sorry" page again.

Several TUAW staff members have been seeing this bug for a few weeks with Safari in 10.7.2; unfortunately, it is not fixed with 10.7.3. Fortunately the "workaround" is fairly simple: if you get a 404 page on support.apple.com, try reloading the page, or just use a different browser. You'll need to do so if you're downloading the combo update to fix install issues with 10.7.3.

Safari users seeing random '404 not found' on valid support.apple.com pages originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

1Password is one of my most-used iOS apps, since I need it to log in to any site which requires a password.

Since the introduction of 1Password on iOS, Agile has provided a bookmarklet which will open 1Password and then search for the current domain. That helps the fact that 1Password can't be fully integrated with Safari on iOS. Unfortunately the bookmarklet stopped working in iOS 5.

According to the company's blog, Agile has discontinued the bookmarklet and won't be updating it. They are working on "something better coming up for the future." They went on to add that they want to make 1Password's own integrated browser "more usable as "a Safari replacement, or rather partial replacement."

While I will reserve judgment until I see it, I have serious reservations about this plan. I have used iCab Mobile on the iPad for over a year. iCab is a superior browser to Safari, but it is still difficult to use instead of Safari because iOS doesn't allow you to change the default browser. It's hard to imagine that 1Password's integrated browser will be better than iCab.

Fortunately, two 1Password users, Kevin Yank and Brendan Averett, have created a new Look Up in 1Password bookmarklet which is compatible with iOS 5. You can either copy that link, or use this:

javascript:window.location='onepassword://'+window.location.href.substring(window.location.href.indexOf('//')+2

I have successfully tested it on iOS 5 and 1Password Pro (with both Safari and iCab).

Unofficial "Look Up in 1Password" bookmarklet for iOS 5 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 29 Jan 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The excellent ReadNow application, which allows you to easily read articles from your Instapaper and Read It Later articles on your Mac, has been pulled from the Mac App Store "...because of an infringement letter." Developer Michael Schneider added "[i]n my current situation I'm not allowed to provide any further information."

The good news is that if you have already purchased the app, you can still download it from the "Purchases" tab in the App Store.app even though the iTunes page for ReadNow now leads to the message, "Your request could not be completed."

However, as I waited for the Mac App Store to load on my iMac this morning, I found myself wondering "What would I do if I couldn't re-download it from the Mac App Store?"

Fortunately I have the app on my MacBook Air, so I could go to /Applications/ReadNow.app and then select File » Compress "Read Now" (or control+click the app and choose "Compress" from the menu).

Terminal option

If you wanted to make a copy of ReadNow (or any app) on the command line, I believe that your best option is using ditto like this:

sudo ditto -v --keepParent -kc ReadNow.app ReadNow.zip

(I don't claim to be a ditto expert, but I can tell you that worked for me. The -k option tells ditto to make zip archives. The --rsrc --extattr and --qtn options are all the default, so they don't need to be explicitly specified.)

I then copied the 'ReadNow.zip' file to my Dropbox so I would have it, just in case Apple removes the option to download it.

This should work for all Mac App Store apps (Xcode and "Install Lion" excepted), but may not work for other apps which use an installer and may install other files besides the ones in /Applications/.

Show me all of my Mac App Store apps

Speaking of the command line, if you want to see a list of all the Mac App Store apps that you have installed on your computer, you can run this command in Terminal.app:

find /Applications \
-path '*Contents/_MASReceipt/receipt' \
-maxdepth 4 -print |\
sed 's#.app/Contents/_MASReceipt/receipt#.app#g; s#/Applications/##'

Note: this won't show you Xcode, because Xcode is an unusual case. It is an installer which installs Xcode and then the installer is removed.

An ounce of prevention

There has been no indication that Apple will remove ReadNow from your list of Purchased apps, I just wanted to have a backup 'just in case.' Hopefully the "infringement letter" issue will be settled soon and it will be available again. However, if the iOS App Store is any indication, eventually jettisoned apps will become unavailable for re-download. Also, the upcoming sandboxing requirements may lead to some existing applications being removed.

As always, it's good to have your own backups rather than relying on being able to re-download anything from "the cloud." I wrote a small shell script which will look in /Applications/ for any applications which have the Mac App Store receipt, and create a .zip file for each of them. (While I have tested it myself and it works for me, YMMV, use only at your own risk, etc.)

To use it, download the script to your Desktop (or wherever) and then run:

chmod 755 ~/Desktop/backupmas.sh

And then run it via

~/Desktop/backupmas.sh

(Obviously if you saved it somewhere else, use that path instead of ~/Desktop/.)

It may ask for your administrator password. If so, that's the one you use to log in to your computer, not your Mac App Store password.

How to backup your Mac App Store apps originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Reader Mark R. Friedman wrote in to ask about setting up a Mac Pro with an SSD in the second optical drive, keeping the /Users folder on another drive; he wasn't sure how to do it. Macworld just discussed one method, using the built-in home folder path controls in System Preferences. The magic begins with right-clicking or Control-clicking the user name in the Users preference pane, which allows you to access the Advanced Options that control where the home folder lives on your drive.

This was the same approach my friend Jon Deal detailed in an article explaining how to Move Your Home Folder Off Your SSD Boot Drive in OS X way back in November 2009 (because he's a huuuuuge nerd. I kid because I love, Jon) but his information is still relevant. If you want to move your entire /Users/ folder to another drive, or to a different partition on the same physical drive, Jon's instructions will work fine.

There are, of course, other ways to do it.

Matt Legend Gemmell rightly points out that while moving the entire /Users/ folder is straightforward, it may not be your best option. He recommends only moving some specific folders to the non-SSD drive, specifically Downloads, Movies, and Pictures (for some users, Music may also fit in that category). Those folders tend to be the largest ones, and can easily be symbolically linked from your non-SSD drive. (A symlink is the UNIX equivalent of an OS X alias or a Windows file shortcut, but in some edge cases and for some applications it behaves more predictably than an alias would.)

Having used a MacBook Air for about a year now, I can't stand to use a non-SSD drive anymore. Even accessing files on an HDD is slow enough that I want to avoid it whenever possible.

Another option for setting up your new SSD-based Mac

Mark asked for instructions for setting this up on a Mac Pro, which has plenty of drive bays for additional hardware. Laptop users (who ordinarily would not have space for two fixed drives) may be considering replacing the SuperDrive with an SSD. The user folder process is the same for any of them.

Step 0: I'm borrowing this from Jon, but before you do anything else make sure you have a working backup of all of your stuff. Check to make sure. Disconnect any drives which don't need to be connected during the install to reduce the chance of accidentally installing it on the wrong drive.

Step 1: Install Mac OS X directly on your SSD (if it isn't already). With Lion this will mean downloading the Lion Installer from the Mac App Store and following the steps to install it on your SSD.

Step 2: Don't migrate your apps and settings. If you're switching to a completely new drive, now is a good time to make a clean break from cruft you don't really need: apps you installed but never used, leftover project files from 2007 that you'll never look at again, that folder of animated GIFs from Geocities, etc. Start with a clean installation of OS X. Only install apps as you need them.

Step 3: Use your non-SSD as a reference drive. It will appear as /Volumes/{drive name} and you can access your old files as you find you need them.

For the purposes of this article, let's assume that your old drive is /Volumes/OldDrive. You will see a bunch of folders in there, including /Users/ which is where your old home account is located, including your old iTunes and iPhoto libraries, if you use them. Matt Gemmell explained how he linked some folders to their usual spots (if you want to do that and are not comfortable with using Terminal.app, I recommend SymbolicLinker which will make it easier to manage.) One potential tricky part is that OS X does not want you to delete some "default" folders, so it makes it difficult to do so. You can either fight it, or you can just leave the system folders where they are and just tell various apps to look elsewhere for their data.

For example, if you start iPhoto or iTunes while holding down the Option/Alt key, it will ask you where to find their library. If your libraries have gotten out of hand, this is a good time to start over. It is particularly easy in iTunes to put the media (songs, videos, podcasts, etc) on an external drive, but keep the actual library files on your SSD. Having the library files on the SSD will makes iTunes faster than you've ever seen it before (iTunes is still one of my least favorite apps, but at least it's faster).

Most Mac web browsers will default to saving files to ~/Downloads/ but you can change that in preferences to /Volumes/OldDrive/Downloads or anywhere else on the non-SSD drive. The same goes for movie/video files. They don't have to be in ~/Movies, that's just where OS X defaults to putting them.

Which trade-offs do you prefer?

Now you have are three options for using an SSD plus HDD:

1. Move Your Home Folder Off Your SSD Boot Drive in OS X as Jon Deal suggested.
2. Keep everything on your SSD except for a few linked folders as Matt Gemmell suggested.
3. Use the SSD and change applications to point to your HDD as I have suggested by changing preferences where possible.

Each method has its advantages and disadvantages.

Jon's is the easiest, but you lose some of the advantages of the SSD for applications which store library/cache files in your $HOME. This is probably the best solution if you have a small SSD.

Matt's method has you tinkering around with folders Apple really doesn't want you messing with, but it will work with all applications, even ones which don't let you define where their data is kept. If you want to dive in, set everything up, but then not have to worry about changing much after the initial setup, Matt's ideas may work for you. If you have specific applications that you use which cannot change where their files are stored, this is your best option.

My suggestion tries to maximize the SSD benefits for those willing to change some app settings. It works especially well if you've been lugging around a bunch of files that you don't really use that often and are ready for a clean start.

I've done this with a 250 GB SSD, and currently have 168 GB free. My large downloaded files, movies, music, and pictures are all on external drives. I use DiskAlarm (US$2, Mac App Store) to keep an eye on available space on the SSD. When it starts to get low, I go through ~/Downloads and ~/Desktop delete files I no longer want or need, or move them to external storage if I no longer need them. Of course, I am also using a MacBook Air, which means that I don't have the option of a second internal hard drive. If you do, you may want to do things differently.

Ask TUAW: How do I setup a Mac with both an SSD and a regular hard drive? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The other day I wrote about Ask Different, the Apple-centric site in the Stack Exchange crowdsourced tech-help network. At the end of that article I mentioned something was coming, and now I can tell you the rest of the details.

The Contest

Starting today, Ask Different is running a contest. The rules are simple: ask a question related to iOS, and be sure to tag it "iOS" (plus whatever other relevant tags apply). There will be two winners: the question which gets the most views and the question with the highest number of votes will win a 16GB iPod nano (6th Generation) or Apple accessories of comparable value (your choice).

The Rules

• The contest is open to both new and current Stack Exchange and Ask Different users.
• Everyone is eligible to participate regardless of geographic location. If you live in an area of the world where it is too difficult for Stack Exchange to ship you your prize, they'll figure something else out on a case by case basis.
• The only metrics in use to determine winners are the number of page views and votes your questions get. So ask as many good questions as you can, and share them using whatever means you see fit. Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google Plus, whatever!
• There will be separate (and equal!) prizes for The Unofficial Apple Weblog readers who are participating in this contest. Make sure include in your Stack Exchange profile that you're a TUAW reader. (You need to include the word "TUAW" so the contest search can find you.)

The Dates

The contest begins today (Monday, January 16th) at 10 am EST and goes until Friday, January 27th at 11:59 pm (EST). Only questions that are asked within that time period will count towards the contest.

New to Stack Exchange / Ask Different?

If you don't already have one, go to http://apple.stackexchange.com/users/login and create an account. Be sure to mention TUAW in your profile (or add it if you already have an account).

If you are not familiar with Stack Exchange, I would highly recommend checking out the Ask Different FAQ which has a list of "best practices" including etiquette and protocol for asking and answering questions. It also explains some aspects of the site such as voting and reputation.

Win/win and maybe win again

Of course you can continue to send us questions for our Ask TUAW and Aunt TUAW series, but we get far more questions than we can answer. I also know that many of our readers have a wealth of information to share with others. Getting more people to know and use Ask Different is a win/win for the Apple community. The chance to win a prize for asking a great question is just icing on the cake.

Disclaimer: The Ask Different iPod contest is managed entirely by Stack Exchange. The prizes awarded and the contest process are completely under the control of Stack Exchange, and decisions made by Stack Exchange are final. TUAW and AOL have no administrative or legal role in this contest and cannot be held responsible for any questions of eligibility or other matters.

Ask Different contest starts today with bonus for TUAW readers originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 16 Jan 2012 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Most of the people savvy enough to be reading an Apple tech blog are probably the ones who get asked a lot of computer-related questions by family and friends. Perhaps you provided tech support over the holidays. But what happens when you have a question? Who can you ask for help?

My favorite spot for Apple Q&A is Ask Different, which is part of the Stack Exchange network of sites. I've only been using it for a few months, but unlike all of the other "help forums" I have used in the past, this is one I return to almost every day, because it's better.

Most web forums are horribly ugly. Posts are crammed full of animated GIF signatures and a whole bunch of irrelevant information about the user. Many have huge distracting ads which are inserted in-between questions and answers. Discussion threads can go on for pages and pages, making it difficult to find any good information among the cruft.

Ask Different is clean and straightforward: a question at the top of each page, and answers below. Good answers get voted up, bad answers get voted down. Users can have their own "avatar" but other than that, the only other information you'll see is "reputation data." More on that in a moment.

More importantly, it is not a discussion forum, it is a place to ask questions and get answers, hopefully so that the next time someone has a similar question, they can find the page where it was asked and find the information they need.

Most web forums are also notoriously horrible for the trolling, flame wars, and related nonsense. Ask Different has administrators and moderators who not only help keep order, they will even edit questions for clarity, as well as make suggestions on how questions can be improved. If a question is deemed off-topic, it is closed. The end result is a much nicer experience than any other forum I have ever used.

When you first join the site, you will have only very basic privileges, such as asking or answering a question. As your reputation increases, you will gain the ability to do more things on the site. Your reputation data is posted alongside your question and answer. If you ask a good question, it will get voted up, and your "reputation" will increase. Provide a good answer, it too can be voted up (not only by the person who asked the question, but also by others who read it), and your reputation will increase.

If you want to join Ask Different, you probably won't even have to make a new login. You can use your Gmail, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, or any other Open ID login. (If you want to make a separate Stack Exchange login, you can do that too.) Just head over to their login page and you can be up and running in a few minutes. (Note that Stack Exchange uses Gravatar for avatars, so if you want your own picture on your account, you'll need to connect it to a Gravatar account.) Your account will work across the entire Stack Exchange family of sites. Once you are there, take a look at questions with no official answer yet or post one of your own.

With so many bad web forums out there, you might have given up on ever finding a useful one. Trust me, I understand, I use Google Chrome's personal blacklist to block search results from several of them. Ask Different is truly useful, and it will only get better with more people who are willing to share their knowledge.

Also, just a little heads up that if you don't have an Ask Different/Stack Exchange account yet, you might want to get a head-start and set one up soon, because we have a little something planned for next week. All I can tell you right now is that it will only be for TUAW readers, and you'll need an account on Ask Different to be able to participate.

"Ask Different" welcomes your Apple questions originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Fluid lets you create an "app" out of a website. If you use one specific website all the time, this alone is very handy. For example, if you wanted a browser specifically for Gmail, you could make one using Fluid and set its own icon, download directory, and other settings. Or maybe you heard about Facebook tracking users even when they are "logged out" of Facebook and want to have a browser that you only use for Facebook.

Once you start making them, the uses for per-site browsers start appearing everywhere. I created one for my web hosting company's "web panel" with links on the bookmark bar to domain registration, support links, mail settings, etc. I don't need to see those links all the time, so I wouldn't want to put them on my regular browser's toolbar. But when I need to do something on my host, it keeps me from having to search all over their menus for the settings I use the most.

Is there a site that has a better iPad version than the regular version? Make a per-site browser for that site, and set the User Agent to the iPad from the menu. (Unlike Safari, that setting will stay even after the app is restarted.)

Fluid is free to use, but for $5 you get a few extra features:

1. Separate cookie storage (usually cookies are shared with Safari).
2. Minimize app to the menu bar instead of the dock
3. Userscripts or Userstyles
4. Lion Full Screen mode

Ok, honestly, #4 ought to be a default part of the app, but the others are really well worth the money. Do you use more than one Gmail account? With separate cookies, you can make separate browser-apps for each one, which makes it much easier. (Same goes for Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media site.) Separate cookies for Facebook means that Facebook can't track you whenever are doing when you aren't using Facebook. Worried about Google invading your privacy? Create a Fluid.app for Google and keep its settings separate from your other sites too.

Do you like to listen to Internet radio? Make a browser that only appears in the menu-bar and you can easily control it without cluttering up your dock. Use Google Calendar? Create a browser for it, set the User Agent to "iPhone" and put it in your menu bar for quick reference.

Using Fluid.app Browsers With 1Password

Unfortunately, Fluid.app browsers do not integrate with 1Password. I'm hoping that might change in the future, but in the meantime, the good news is that you can still use your 1Password data using a feature called 1PasswordAnywhere. The short version is this

• Locate your "1Password.agilekeychain" file
• Control-click » Show Package Contents
• Find 1Password.html file

(If your 1Password file is in Dropbox, the path will be ~/Dropbox/1Password/1Password.agilekeychain/1Password.html.)

Put the full, complete path into your Fluid browser. For example, mine is:

file:///Users/luomat/Dropbox/1Password/1Password.agilekeychain/1Password.html

(Be sure to change /Users/luomat/ to your path.)

That way you can open your 1Password file (read-only) in your Fluid browser. (Note: if you have restricted what sites your Fluid browser can access, you may need to loosen that to allow it to access that page.)

Closing Notes

The only other drawback is that Safari extensions don't work with Fluid browsers. Also, you may have heard that Google Chrome has a similar feature called "Application Shortcuts." Unfortunately, that feature is not available on Mac OS X, and Google has not said if or when it ever will be.

In a world where "web apps" are becoming more and more common, Fluid makes them easier to use than ever. You can use the majority of features for free, so go ahead and download Fluid and check it out. It requires 10.6 or later. Once you start using it, you'll probably find even more uses for it. Some day I'll explain my byzantine system of using Fluid and Choosy, but in the meantime, take it for a spin.

Daily Mac App: Fluid originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 06 Jan 2012 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

CodeRunner is a text editor for people who write code. It comes with built-in syntax highlighting for AppleScript, C, C++, Java, JavaScript (Node.js), Objective,C, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, or shell scripting.

I have been using it for a few months, mostly for writing shell scripts, and love it. The color coding makes it easy to immediately tell when I am missing a quote or some other basic syntax flaw, which means making fewer mistakes. It automatically applies templates (which are editable) to new files, so whenever I start a new shell script, it automatically includes the header lines and some other settings that I always use. In fact, it defaults to using the same template as the last kind of file you saved, so if you tend to write in one language, it will automatically pick that language and template. Otherwise you can choose manually.

One of my favorite aspects of it is a built-in terminal console, which lets you test the script without switching over to Terminal or iTerm. A recent update even made it possible to define arguments, compilations flags, or arguments before sending it to the built-in console. The console automatically appears when needed, and can be shown/hidden with a keyboard command.

CodeRunner offers "completions" (for example: automatically adding a closing bracket when you open one), but it also lets you turn that off if you don't like it. There are even themes to change the color combinations. I tend to prefer a simple black-on-white, but there are several dark background/light type options as well. In Lion, CodeRunner supports Autosaving, Versions and Fullscreen mode. It also supports "tabs" (multiple documents in one window) if you want to use them, but doesn't require them. Generally I don't like tabs in any apps except web browsers, but it is handy to have the option to keep related files together when working on separate projects.

CodeRunner isn't going to replace a complex program like BBEdit with integrated FTP and a multitude of configurable options, but it doesn't need to. I own, use, and love BBEdit, but I use CodeRunner exclusively for writing shell scripts now, and vastly prefer it for that purpose.

If you want a lightweight tool for writing scripts, you should definitely check it out on its home page or download it from the Mac App Store for $10. (Also: if you use regular expressions -- especially if you have trouble with them -- be sure to also checkout Patterns, an app by the same developer which makes it much easier to see how they expand. I'll probably review that more fully another day but it's currently on sale for $3 instead of $5, so you might want to check it out soon.)

Daily Mac App and Friday Favorite: CodeRunner originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 06 Jan 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

DMG files are often used when distributing Mac software outside the Mac App Store. While DMGs can be confusing to new users, I like them because they allow me to keep an original, unmodified version of whatever program I have downloaded. About the only drawback for me is that some DMGs come with an EULA which has to be accepted before the DMG will be mounted. If the EULA window gets covered up, it can be frustrating to try to figure out why it has not mounted. EULAs can also make DMGs unreliable to mount in shell scripts.

While looking for a solution, I came across references to an application called "FlashMount" which was designed to do exactly what its name implies: mounts disk images (dmg, iso, etc) in a "flash." It also automatically accepts any EULA which is presented. OK, sure, we all know we are supposed to read them first. If you do, feel free to skip this app.

FlashMount also skips the verification of disk images before mounting. That sounds bad, but in reality, if the disk image is corrupted or incomplete, it probably won't mount anyway. The only time I have ever seen a corrupted DMG, it was an incomplete download. Some disk images don't even have a checksum to verify against, but depending on the size of the DMG, verification can take a long time. On a 1.2 GB DMG, verification takes almost 3 minutes on my MacBook Air. Without verification, I can mount that same disk image in two seconds.

Still, if that's not a risk you're comfortable with, this probably isn't the app for you. Otherwise, FlashMount is fast, handy, and free.

Download

After reading about FlashMount, I was sold on the potential usefulness of this app, but there was one problem: all the download links I found were broken.

The articles which talked about FlashMount linked to "www.liquidnexus.com" which was the original site where the app was hosted by its developer. However, sometime in the past few years, the domain registration must have lapsed and been re-registered by a domain squatter (which is why I have not actually linked to it here).

Eventually I found a site which had mirrored the download on their own server. Warning: linked website is fairly awful. If you'd rather avoid that, you can download FlashMount 1.5.2 (188K, MD5 sum = 43522f417ae5ccf4f883fc049c8fd0c1) from my personal website. A one page PDF overview is also available.

The good news is that the app seems to work perfectly under Lion. I've made FlashMount the default app for opening DMG and ISO files on my Mac, and if I run into any trouble with a particular file, then I open it with DiskImageMounter.

However, I found an even better solution if your goal (like mine) is mounting DMGs in Terminal, even if the DMG has a EULA and needs to be mounted by a non-interactive script.

Here's where things get nerdy

While I was investigating the app, I realized that the whole thing was basically a wrapper around a simple shell script:

  #!/bin/sh -f echo "Y" | /usr/bin/hdid "$1" #if ($status != 0) exit%           

I was not familiar with hdid (I had always used hdiutil for mounting DMGs on the command line) but it worked. Sending echo "Y" tells hdid to accept the EULA. (It's important to note that you are not subverting, bypassing, or avoiding the EULA, you are doing on the command line what most people do with the mouse: accepting it without reading it.)

I started building on that and made my own script, which I called flashmount.sh. It uses the same echo "Y" trick as the original, but it adds some extra error checking.

It also adds an option to verify disk images if you use the '-v' flag, like this: flashmount.sh -v foo.dmg which is handy for those times when you do want to verify an image before you mount it.

If the disk image successfully mounts, the script will output the mounted path, which will be something like "/Volumes/Flashmount/" or similar.

You can download my flashmount.sh if you want. You could even wrap it up as an app with Platypus if you don't trust the FlashMount.app.

FlashMount isn't going to change your life, but it can make one part a little easier and a little faster.

Daily Mac App: FlashMount quickly mounts disk images originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 30 Dec 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I am a big advocate of the iPad as a portable computer which can satisfy most of the needs of most computer users most of the time. Combine the iPad with a keyboard, and it becomes even easier to use. The only downside has been the cost. The Apple Wireless Keyboard sells for $69, and is pretty expensive for most people. However, before now, I didn't know of a less expensive alternative that I would recommend to people.

The AmazonBasics Bluetooth Keyboard for Apple iPad, iPhone changed that. It is a low-profile keyboard with solid key action. It is almost half the price (currently US$37.30, but I've seen it as low as $29.99), slightly narrower, and feels lighter (it uses two AAA batteries compared to the Apple keyboard's two AA batteries). It does not feel as "solid" as the Apple Keyboard.

The top row of function keys have several which are labeled for different features: Spotlight search, play/pause, forward/reverse, volume up/down/mute. One even serves as a "keyboard" button to use to toggle the on-screen keyboard, and there's a Delete key for those who aren't satisfied with Backspace. On the back, there is an on/off switch and a button to initiate pairing with new devices.

Speaking of devices, while the item description lists the iPad and iPhone, it will also work with the iPod touch. In fact, it should work with any Bluetooth-enabled device. The iOS-specific elements are (as far as I can tell), just the aforementioned labels on the function keys.

The only (potential) drawback is that the keyboard layout is slightly smaller and there are a few layout changes. Apple's Wireless Keyboard is the same configuration and size as a MacBook, which makes it easier to go back and forth between typing on a Mac and an iPad. Obviously this won't be an issue for everyone.

You don't need a keyboard for an iPad, but if you decide that you want one, the AmazonBasics Bluetooh Keyboard is light, thin and easy to slip into a bag. The power switch keeps if from activating in your bag, but most importantly, it feels good while typing. All of that for about half of what you'd pay for Apple's Bluetooth keyboard.

AmazonBasics bluetooth keyboard is highly portable for low price originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 29 Dec 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Like most technically-inclined folks, I found myself doing a little family tech support over the holidays. I needed to use an iPod touch as a USB drive to copy files between my Mac and my brother's Windows 7 computer. This isn't something I'll do often so I was looking for something easy and free. I found what I was looking for in iExplorer (formerly "iPhone Explorer") from Macroplant.

Let's be clear: iExplorer is a simple application which is designed to do only two things: a) mount your iOS devices like a basic USB "thumb" drive and b) persuade you to consider upgrading to the company's PhoneDisk (US$20) program, which has more features. Some of those features are even shown within the iExplorer UI, and when you click on them, a prompt appears to upgrade. Even if you don't want to upgrade, you'll still run into a mild case of the "nags." While iExplorer is offered for free, the developers ask that you spread the word by posting a message on Twitter or Facebook. Otherwise there's a window that covers up the application each time it launches. For a program that you keep in your "tech support tool belt" for occasional use only, these are minor annoyances.

If you do decide to upgrade, I'd suggest checking out PhoneView which does a whole lot more than just mount the iOS device. I have written about PhoneView before, and it continues to be my "go to" app. There is no Windows version, however, so if that's important to you, PhoneDisk might be a better choice.

There's not much more to say about iExplorer itself. The app installs simply, and usage is as straightforward as possible. I had a 32 GB USB thumb drive, but it was formatted for Mac OS X and couldn't be read on my brother's Windows 7 machine. A 32 GB iPod touch (or iPad or iPhone) with a lot of free space makes a great method of transportation between Windows and Mac computers. iExplorer filled a gap, and for free.

Daily Mac App: iExplorer originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 28 Dec 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

FileVault 2 is a huge improvement over the original FileVault implementation, offering whole disk encryption with no noticeable performance penalty. The only downside is that every account on the computer (even "standard," non-administrator accounts) is given access to decrypt the drive. The good news is that you can control which accounts are allowed to decrypt the drive by removing the password to any account which should not be able to decrypt FileVault (Don't worry, it's only temporary.).

Temporary insecurity leads to increased security

My MacBook Air has 4 user accounts on it: for me, my wife, my son, and my mother-in-law (long story). My wife and I both use secure passwords, but my mother-in-law and son do not. If a chain is only as strong as the weakest link, I had 4 links, and 2 of them were pretty weak.

I could not find any way to control which accounts can decrypt FileVault, but I did learn that any account which does not have a password is automatically disqualified from decrypting FileVault. Even if you add a password back to that account, FileVault will be disabled for that account unless you specifically re-enable it.

I'll walk you through the steps. (Note: I recommend reading through all of the instructions before starting any of this.)

Step 1: Log in to the account that will not be able to unlock FileVault.

Step 2: Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app

Yes, I know. You hate Terminal. But you have to use it because you can't remove your password via the GUI.

But you can delete it in Terminal. Just type passwd at the prompt. You will be asked for your "Old Password" (that is, your current password), and then you will be asked for a new password, twice. Enter your current password, then just press the Enter/Return key when asked for a "New Password" and "Retype New Password."

Once you do that, you will have an account with no password. Now we are ready to go to FileVault.

Open FileVault

Go to System Preferences » Security & Privacy » FileVault and you will see a new warning "Some users are not able to unlock the disk."

Click "Enable Users" (above) and then "Set Password..." (below)

and then you will see this:

Do not click "Enable User..." or this whole trip will have been for nothing.

Once you leave this window, if you click on the "Enable Users..." button while logged into an account which is not setup to unlock FileVault (but which does have a password set), it may be automatically enabled. Moral? Don't open that window unless you want to enable the account, or be ready to repeat this process.

You may want to set "Require an administrator password to access system preferences with lock icons" in the "General" tab under System Preferences » Security & Privacy.

"So how do I use that account?"

You may wonder how you can use that account. After all, when the computer reboots, there will be no option to choose that account, and any account you do choose will be automatically logged into after the computer starts up.

Start by choosing one of the available accounts to decrypt/unlock FileVault. This will begin the booting process. From there, you have a choice: either let the automatic login process complete and then log out (which will let you log in to the other account), or hold down the Shift key when you see the grey Apple logo which will prevent auto-login and leave you at the main login window.

FileVault 2 locks or unlocks the entire drive, be careful gets the 'keys'

I consider FileVault 2 an essential feature for any portable Mac. I also recommend separate accounts for every member of your household old enough to press keys on the keyboard (or, at the very least, a separate account for your important data and one for other family members). But if you don't want to risk the possibility that someone in your household thinks that one two three four five is a great password, consider only letting some accounts decrypt FileVault.

Finally, remember that whichever account you use after FileVault is decrypted, the drive will be encrypted again when you reboot or shutdown.

Prevent certain accounts from unlocking FileVault 2 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

My friend Maya wrote to ask: "Which iPad stand should I buy? I can't seem to find any really positive reviews. I want it mostly for cooking, but it would also be nice to have something to stick my iPad on while it's charging so it's not just laying there for the cat to knock it off the counter."

As we approach the gift-giving season, iPad accessories are probably on many people's wish list, so how do you know what's good and what's bad? As Maya mentioned, it can be difficult to tell from reviews, especially random reviews left on websites.

Although Maya specifically asked about stands I will also mention cases because many of them also serve as stands too.

Options

Let's look at your general options. (Note: prices listed are all in US dollars, and have been rounded off to the nearest dollar because we all know that $X.99 is a marketing trick, right?)

1) Apple's iPad Dock [$30] is a weighed base with a dock connector on the back so you can easily charge your iPad, and then pick it up. I bought one of these for my iPad 1 and almost never used it. The dock is a great idea for iPhones and iPods, but the iPad is just too big for it. If you tap on the screen, it is very easy to feel like you're going to knock it over. Plus (and this will be a recurring theme as we look at iPad stands/cases), the iPad dock only holds the iPad in one orientation. Not to mention that it seems drastically overpriced to me. TJ's Recommendation: Strong Avoid.

2) Apple's iPad case [$40] is only compatible with the original iPad. That's not a bad thing, because Apple's iPad case was pretty much a complete dud. Despite being innovative for the ability to set the iPad up so that you could easily watch video on it or type at a slight incline (two designs that countless other cases would copy), it was expensive, not particularly well made, and extremely prone to collecting dust and other miscellaneous crud. TJ's Recommendation: Strong Avoid.

3) Apple's iPad 2 Smart Cover are likewise ridiculously overpriced at $70 for the "leather" versions and $40 for the "Polyurethane" (read: plastic) versions. And yes, I bought one. If you decide that you want one of these, at least check Amazon for less-awful prices. The Smart Cover is an extremely clever bit of engineering, and I'm always impressed by it, as long as I don't have to think about the cost. It will work as a stand ("landscape" mode only), and quite well, but I simply can't recommend it due to the price. TJ's Recommendation: Avoid, unless someone else is paying.

4) I reviewed the Griffin Loop last year and talked about how much I liked it. It's a (relatively) heavy, weighted base with a notch to hold the iPad in either portrait or landscape mode, and even had room for it to be plugged in if it was in portrait mode. The notch was big enough so that it would even work with some iPad cases without having to be removed.

Its main drawback was that it was bulky and not really designed for travel, but if you just wanted to leave it somewhere like on a desk, it was great. Unfortunately, it was designed for the iPad 1, and when the iPad 2 came out with its thinner, more curved body, the "notch" designed for the more "square" edges of the iPad 1 now feels a little too big for the iPad 2. It just doesn't hold the iPad 2 as securely as I'd like. I still use it, but I'm a little more worried about it getting bumped. TJ's Recommendation: Avoid for iPad 2

Aside: Griffin does not appear to have updated the loop for the iPad, but they now make something called the Griffin A-Frame. I have not used one so I might be wrong, but it certainly doesn't look great. The iPad appears to rest on top of it, which looks precarious. That said, it has excellent reviews on Amazon.com where you can also find it for about $30 instead of the $50 list price. I can't make a specific recommendation for or against it, but it's another option.

5) I finally found a stand that I liked in the elago P2 Stand for iPad (pictured above). It is a piece of metal cut specifically to hold the iPad. It has a small "footprint" so it doesn't take up a lot of space when not in use. It seems stable without being too heavy (although with a cat around, you'd always have to be careful!).

The metal color is almost exactly the same as what Apple uses for its computers (if such a thing matters to you, I only noticed it after I bought it). The other nice thing about this stand is that it can hold the iPad in either portrait or landscape. There is a hole in the back of the stand for a charging cable to fit through. It is solid enough that I can tap on the iPad screen without feeling like it is going to tip over. It holds the iPad at a good angle for reading or watching a video/movie.

The only drawback is the price ($30 at Amazon) which is definitely enough to elicit a "But it's just a piece of cut metal!" response from Normal People such as your humble writer's wife. Still, this receives the only TJ's Recommendation: Strong Buy on the list.

Here's another thought...

All of the cases/stands I mentioned above are $30-$70, which is a bit absurd.

But there's another option too, one that I "discovered" by accident one day in my office, which has several distinct benefits:

• It is compatible with the iPad 1 or 2 (and almost certainly with the iPad 3, whenever that comes out)
• it will hold the iPad in either portrait or landscape
• it will allow for a dock connector to be attached in either orientation.
• Perhaps best of all, when not in use, it can fold flat for storage or put it in your laptop bag to bring with you.

Oh, and did I mention that it costs around $5?

What is this magical device? It's not an iPad holder at all, it's a wire-frame book holder.

You can find one on Amazon.com for $5.12. Or you might find one in the supply closet at work that no one has used in ages. When folded, it's smaller than the iPad, so you can probably slip it into your bag next to the iPad (obviously you'll want to make sure that the metal doesn't scratch up the iPad glass). There isn't much weight to it, so you probably won't even notice it. And if you do find yourself with a recipe that's in a dead-tree cookbook instead of your iPad, you even use it to hold that cookbook open for you.

Did you say "cooking"?

Whichever stand you decide to use when using your iPad while cooking, remember that your iPad will fit inside a gallon-size Ziplock bag (or similar) which will not prevent you from using the touchscreen, but will protect it from spills, etc.

Splatter happens.

What to look for, and what to look out for

Now you have several options for stands/cases, as well as some things to think about when evaluating them: Can it hold the iPad in either orientation? Can you plug it in while in the stand/case? Can you tap on the iPad without feeling like it is going to fall over?

Be careful about when looking for iPad stands/cases as there are some which will only fit the iPad 1, and not all sellers are very forthcoming about that detail. Take a close look at the pictures they show (if any) and if you aren't sure that it works with the iPad 2, be sure to ask before you buy, especially if the price seems really low. They might just be trying to clear out old stock by calling it an "iPad Case" instead of an "iPad 1 case"!

Oh, and always shop around for prices. The best price is almost never to be found on the official website. Amazon and Monoprice are your friend.

Want more ?

TUAW has reviewed a lot of iPad stands and iPad cases, so if you want a second opinion or more options than I covered here, feel free to take a look at those. Also check out our Holiday Gift Guide page for more seasonal suggestions.

Holiday Gift Guide: Choosing an iPad stand originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 06 Dec 2011 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

We're on the lookout for great deals this Thanksgiving weekend! Mike Schramm has already put up two posts on iOS apps which are on sale, and I've got a few Mac software deals to tell you about.

The first one is Soulver, which is an app I've had my eye on since Marco Arment mentioned it on Build & Analyze. Soulver lets you do all sorts of mathematical calculations using words as well as numbers. Speaking as someone who isn't very good with numbers, I love Soulver because it lets me calculate things the way I think. It does conversions, currencies, file sizes (bytes to gigabytes), and yes, it can even calculate tips. To really get sense of how it works, watch the video. Soulver for Mac is on sale for $12 (50% off). The iPhone version is $1 (75% off) and the iPad version is $2 (66% off). This deal is only good the 24th and 25th.

Mariner Software is offering a deal through Saturday on Paperless for Mac for $30 (40% off the usual price of $50) through their online store. Check their site for details on what scanners it works with.

DEVONtechnologies is offering 25% off their apps DEVONthink, DEVONagent, and DEVONnote. Note that this deal doesn't start until Friday and ends Monday. These are great apps for searching for and storing information.

Marked, from our own Brett Terpstra, is on sale starting Black Friday (and going through Sunday) as well, at 50% off. It's a terrific Markdown tool for previewing your work from any text editor.

Speaking of Brett, if you look closely you can spot him in the team picture over at the AgileBits site (he worked there once upon a time). The company is offering a 50% off discount on all its products through 11/30, including the indispensable 1Password -- if you get it through the Mac App Store, you'll be upgraded for free to the forthcoming version 4.

And, just in time for Advent, the premium version of Glo Bible is available for $35. If you order through their website they are offering a free movie on DVD, as well as 3 DVDs worth of content which allows you to use most of the Glo Bible off-line. They won't even charge you for shipping. You can download the "lite" version of the app for free and try it out first.

Have you spotted any great Mac deals? If so, let us know in the comments!

(Just a reminder, we have comment moderation turned on to stop the flood of spam comments we were getting, so your comments might not be visible right away, especially on Thursday!)

Mac software deals for this Thanksgiving weekend originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 24 Nov 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

EasyFind is a free application that helps you find files and folders on your Mac. And yes, it's better than Spotlight.

EasyFind is made by the folks at DEVONtechnologies who are well-known for developing powerful search software DEVONthink, DEVONagent Pro, and DEVONagent Express, which is to say that EasyFind is made by people who know a lot about search. Compare that to Spotlight, which was a marquee feature of OS X six years ago but never grew into something great.

When you launch EasyFind, you will see several options and choices. Don't let years of Spotlight's simplistic UI overwhelm you; options and choices are a good thing. Take a minute to see what's available, and just start searching.

Down the left-hand side of the window are criteria for searching: Files and Folders, Only Files, Only Folders, or File Contents. Next choose to search for All Words, Any Word, a Phrase, or Unix-Wildcards. You can also specify whether or not the search should be case sensitive, whether it should look in package contents, or include invisible files and folders.

You can also set the scope of the search to be a specific volume/disk, or a specific folder such as your Home folder. 99% of my searches are for things I know are "somewhere" in my Home, or "somewhere" in my Dropbox. Spotlight only lets you choose "current folder" or "everything" which is almost never what I want.

That's far more control and options than what Spotlight gives you (or at least what Spotlight gives you without resorting to byzantine keywords), but what I really love is what you get in the results of your search. Of course you get the filename (and you can expand that column to make it wider, I just made it narrow in the screenshot above), but you also get the creation date, the modification date, the size, the kind and location. If you don't want any of those columns, you can turn them off. If you want to change the order of those columns, or if you want to sort your results by any of those columns, you can do that too.

EasyFind can search for the content of files, but it is not using Spotlight's database, it is actually running the search when you enter it. That means that it won't be as fast as Spotlight, but on my MacBook Air it is still very quick (the speed will be determined by the number of files you are searching plus the speed of the disk). I keep Spotlight around for those times when I need it, but in actual practice I rarely even do. In fact, I've reassigned my Spotlight Keyboard Shortcut to launch EasyFind instead.

(Aside: I had even disabled Spotlight for awhile on my Mac, but there are many things which just don't work properly if Spotlight is completely disabled, so I ended up turning it back on and just ignoring it. YMMV.)

You can download EasyFind from the Mac App Store or directly from DEVONtechnologies. If you download it directly, you can get a version which will work on Mac OS X 10.5 or higher (PowerPC or Intel), which is good news for folks running older versions of Mac OS X.

Thanks to the folks at DEVONtechnologies for this cool app. Take a look at their other freeware apps too!

EasyFind is a free alternative to Spotlight originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 17 Nov 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

If you've ever wanted to download Amazon MP3s via Terminal or over ssh, or ever found yourself unable to use the "Amazon MP3 Downloader.app" then I have good news for you: there is another way.

The problem

Amazon's MP3 Store annoys me to no end. I love the deals that they occasionally offer, but in order to download the files, you have to download the Amazon MP3 Downloader. Inside that dmg file is an installer application that doesn't use the normal .pkg format.

The special installer failed to install the application on my Mac. I managed to install it manually (as well as the plugin that needs to be installed to "/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/"), but then the application kept crashing after each song.

So, to recap, Amazon doesn't use the standard package installer, and their installer failed to work; and they don't use normal downloads, and their non-standard downloader failed to work. This is why you should stick to standards -- they've been better tested for a lot longer than your "roll your own" solution. Stop reinventing the wheel.

The ".amz" file that you download from Amazon is an XML file which includes a download URL, but you can't access that URL to download the music directly. I was all ready to start sniffing TCP headers and try to figure out what special headers the Amazon MP3 Downloader.app uses, when the same thought occurred to me: "Don't reinvent the wheel."

The solution

I was able to find the solution on Google code, specifically at http://code.google.com/p/clamz/ which is described as "is a little command-line program to download MP3 files from Amazon.com's music store."

Side note: I needed to install 'libgcrypt' in order to get clamz to build, which I did using Homebrew simply by typing brew install libgcrypt (assuming you already have brew and Xcode installed). The clamz page also mentions libcurl and libexpat, but I those were already installed on my Mac.

Once I had the necessary libraries installed, installation of clamz was as simple as the instructions on its homepage:

 tar xfvz clamz-0.5.tar.gz  cd clamz-0.5  ./configure  make  sudo make install  

Then I just had to get a "fresh" .amz file from Amazon. To do that, I went to the Amazon Cloud Player, clicked the checkbox at the top to select all my music (see #1 below) and then clicked "Download" (see #2 below):

Note that if you have more songs than will fit on one page, you may have to do this repeatedly for each "page". I only have 230 songs in my Amazon Cloud Player.

That downloaded new ".amz" file on my computer called "Amazon-MP3-1321140421.amz" (yours will be named something similar but different). Then I ran this command simple command:

 clamz --output-dir=~/Music/ ~/Downloads/Amazon-MP3-1321140421.amz 

and watched with sheer delight as clamz downloaded all of my Amazon music files. I accidentally closed my MacBook Air before it was finished, but was able to resume the download simply by adding the --resume flag:

 clamz --resume --output-dir=~/Music/ ~/Downloads/Amazon-MP3-1321140421.amz 

When it finishes, you can delete the .amz file, as the links it contains will expire anyway. You can always download another one later.

Thanks, Internet

This simply would not have been possible without the help of the open source community, both the developer behind clamz (Benjamin Moody) and the awesome folks behind Homebrew.

After I finished using clamz I also found pymazon, but I'm not sure if that works on Mac.

Since I criticized Amazon's non-standard downloader, someone might say "Well, iTunes is a non-standard downloader, too!" That's a valid point. If I had been trying to download from iTunes and it failed to work, I would not have been so fortunate to find an open source solution.

Download Amazon MP3s in Terminal with clamz originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 13 Nov 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

After spending about 10 months without an iPhone, I stayed up late to order the iPhone 4S. Then the next question occurred to me: "What am I going to do for a case?"

I ordered 3 different cases for three different purposes: an AmazonBasics Silicone Case for everyday use, a Mophie Juice Pack Air Case/Rechargeable Battery for "really long day" use, and an iPhone Wallet from the folks at Waterfield Designs/SFBags.com.

Back in February, I bought a bag for my MacBook Air from Waterfield Designs, and I absolutely love it. I carry my 13" MacBook Air and my iPad in it every day. When I decided to get an iPhone, I knew I'd be heading to SFBags.com to see what they had to offer.

The iPhone Wallet

I love this idea. You carry a wallet, you carry an iPhone, why not carry one thing instead of two? For the past several years I've had a wallet which was used mostly to carry cards. If I have cash (which I often don't) I carry it in my pocket but not in my wallet. I have also been known to walk out of the house without either my iPhone or my wallet, so having one less thing to remember seemed like a good idea.

Let's start with what's good about the iPhone wallet. The first thing I noticed is that it looks and feels well made. This isn't a case that's going to start fraying around the edges after a few months. It also already feels "broken in" rather than stiff.

The window in the front will allow you to see the entire screen. I was pleasantly surprised to realize that I could actually use the touch-screen right through the plastic. Even the plastic window seems to be made of sturdy material that won't easily scratch and won't start to pull away from the edges. I assumed this plastic would be the "weakest link" in the case, but it seems just as good as the rest of it. The window is just a bit too small to let you see the iPhone's home button, but you should be able to judge where it is, and you can press it while it is still in the case.

You can fit the iPhone in the wallet while it is in the silicone case (which I assume is about the same size as Apple's "bumper" case). It will be snug, but it will fit. However, once you do that, you have added considerable "bulk" to the iPhone (relatively speaking) and putting it inside the wallet like that will not leave room for much else. If I have the silicone case on, I can only fit 3-5 cards in the wallet before it really starts to feel "too big." (I tried the wallet with the Mophie Juice Pack on it... I did, and it does not fit. The Juice Pack extends the length of the iPhone, and the wallet does not have enough extra room to accommodate that. Nor should it; I only mention this because I assume someone else might want to know.)

If you carry the iPhone "naked," then you can easily fit about 8-10 cards inside the wallet. There are two separate pockets which hold the cards securely.

One unexpected detail was a divider between the "iPhone" part of the wallet and the card section. It is mentioned in the wallet description and shown in the video (see below) but it is thicker than I expected it to be, about 2-3 credit-cards, and covered in "ultrasuede." At first I thought that was intended to protect credit cards from being demagnetized, but Richard tells me that isn't much of a concern these days.

I'm not sure the divider is 100% necessary, but I'm willing to bet that someone at Waterfield Designs had practical experience with another a case that led them to include it. My best guess is that it is probably intended to keep the cash or anything from the "money side" from falling out when you are taking the iPhone out of the wallet. It adds a bit of bulk, but it's not a huge deal. As Gary points out in the video, it does help keep the iPhone pressed up against the window

Two minor complaints...

There's one drawback to the iPhone wallet that should be fairly obvious: if it's in your pocket and you get a call, you have to get the wallet out of your pocket and then the iPhone out of the wallet before you can begin your conversation.

The only other minor complaint I have with the iPhone wallet is with the placement and direction of the zipper. If you think of the "window" side of the case as the "front" then the zipper runs from top-left (when zipped) to bottom-right (when unzipped, as shown above).

The headphone jack is on the top-left of the iPhone. Why is this combination a problem? Because if you are using headphones, you can't keep it in the wallet.

If they had made the wallet so that it zipped from "top-right" to "bottom-left" then you could have stuck the headphones in and threaded the wire out. However, that would have made it a little more awkward for people who are right-handed.

Conclusion

Let's be clear: this isn't a wallet for slipping into the back pocket of your "skinny jeans" before you go out clubbing. It has a certain heft to it. But before you decide whether or not it's "too big" take a minute and walk through this next section with me.

Take out your wallet, put your iPhone on the table, and stack up all of the cards that you carry around with you. Then imagine that wrapped in leather and lined with ultrasuede. Ok, now take a look at those cards again. How many of them do you really need in your wallet all of the time? I took most of my cards out of my wallet and put them into my old wallet and leave it in my office desk drawer or the glove compartment of my car. Library card? Sam's club? Prescription card? AAA? I never carry any store card if they can lookup my account by my phone number.

I was able to get my total down to 5 (and could probably get by with 3 for 95% of the time), which means that I could even leave the silicone case on and still have it not feel "too big." The biggest adjustment for me is that I am used to having my wallet in one pocket and phone in the other, but I love being able to feel it in my pocket and not have to think "Is that my phone or my wallet? Do I have both?" With this I know if I have one, I have the other.

If the idea of a combination wallet/iPhone case appeals to you, the Waterfield Designs iPhone wallet is a great option. A reasonable $41 ($39 + $2 US shipping) buys a great product that will most likely still look and work great even when you're thinking about the iPhone 6!

If you're on the fence, Waterfield Designs has a 90 second review video available too. It shows that you can text or email through the case, and even suggests you could talk on the phone while it was still in the case. I haven't tested that theory because the only people I know who talk into their wallets are crazy people.

The iPhone wallet has a place for your stuff originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 05 Nov 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

If the Camera app and Photos app on your iPhone disagree about the contents of your camera roll, you may find yourself needing to get "under the hood" of your iPhone to fix the issue. Fortunately, you can do this without having to jailbreak and hopefully without losing any pictures.

You may know the name Ethan Marcotte from the world of web design, particularly the idea of responsive web design. This week Ethan posted on Twitter that he was having a problem with his iPhone.

The Camera app saw pictures in his Camera Roll, but the Photos app claimed the Camera Roll was empty. This was preventing iPhoto from synchronizing his pictures.

The first problem was figuring out how to get all the pictures off his iPhone. The second problem was figuring out how to getting the Camera and Photos apps to agree about the contents of his camera roll.

A few years ago, when I had a similar problem with my iPhone camera, I was able to solve the problem using Ecamm's $20 Mac utility PhoneView.

I've written about PhoneView before, and two years ago Dave Caolo even wrote about fixing a bug in iPhone's camera roll, but obviously this is still an issue.

PhoneView gives you access to the data on your phone, regardless of whether it is jailbroken or 'vanilla.' Obviously there are some limitations to what it can access, but for things like pictures and music it can be invaluable.

The first step is to enable the "Show Entire Disk (Advanced Disk Mode)" preference in PhoneView. Turning on that feature will pop up a disclaimer that if you aren't careful you can cause data loss. Let's proceed with caution, but without undue fear.

Once you have Advanced Disk Mode enabled, click on the "Disk" folder under "Data" and look for the two folders highlighted here: DCIM and PhotoData.

Select both of those folders (as shown here), and then click "Copy From iPhone" from the toolbar. This makes sure that you have a local copy of the information, including your pictures and videos. You must confirm that you have all your pictures and videos before continuing.

Aside: there may be another folder called "Photos" which I believe contains the pictures which are synchronized to your iPhone from your Mac via iPhoto or Aperture. Leave that alone.

Once you are sure that you have copied all of your pictures and videos from your iPhone to your Mac, click the "Delete" button.

Now, unlock your iPhone and take a new picture, and you should find that the iPhone has re-created the necessary folders and started a new fresh Camera Roll. Problem solved.

PhoneView costs $19.95, however a free demo is available. Check out the website for a fuller description of all the various features that PhoneView offers. It's definitely worth the cost if you want to backup lots of various pieces of information such as SMSes, phone call lists, even voicemails.

How to use PhoneView to fix your iPhoto camera roll woes originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 29 Oct 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAW has received numerous emails from readers who are confused (with good reason!) about the status of AppleCare+. Good news for those who pre-ordered the iPhone 4S: If you did not get a chance to order AppleCare+ with your iPhone 4S, Apple is extending your eligibility.

When Apple announced AppleCare+ the company said it would only be available at the time of purchase. That is an important distinction from "AppleCare," which can be purchased anytime in the first year but does not include coverage for accidental damage. The reason for AppleCare+'s more restrictive requirement is clear: Apple wants to make sure your iPhone is not already damaged when you purchase AppleCare+.

Apple.com was flooded with pre-orders, so much so that the system was overwhelmed and many people were unable to place orders at all. Others were able to place orders, but weren't offered AppleCare+. Still others gave up and ordered directly through AT&T or Verizon's websites. Personally, after 90 minutes and at least a dozen failed attempts to buy an iPhone 4S through Apple.com and the Apple Store app, I finally gave up and ordered through Verizon's website. At that point (4:30 a.m. local time) and not having slept at all, I forgot all about AppleCare+.

A second chance for pre-orders

Almost immediately people started to write in to TUAW saying that AppleCare+ had not been offered and asking if we knew of any way that it could be added to an existing order. No definitive answer has been available, and various reports across the web showed that people were getting different answers. The most common were:

1. Cancel your pre-order and re-order with AppleCare+
2. Bring your unopened iPhone to your local Apple Store and tell them you want to purchase AppleCare+
3. Call Apple when you receive your iPhone and order AppleCare+.

The first two "solutions" have serious and significant drawbacks. No one wants to cancel their pre-order, because they'll lose their "place" in the pre-order line. All iPhone 4S models are currently showing a wait time of 1-2 weeks. That's not going to sit well with people who ordered in the middle of the night. Bringing your iPhone 4S to your local Apple Store is problematic for A couple reasons. First, your local Apple Store is going to be overwhelmed with customers wanting to buy iPhones, which is either going to mean that people who ordered online are going to have to wait in line or wait until the lines die down. Worse, there are several states with no Apple Stores at all, and even if there is an Apple Store it doesn't mean there's one close. The nearest Apple Store to me is a 2-hour drive, each way.

A few days ago we started getting reports that people who pre-ordered iPhones through Apple.com had received emails directly from Apple offering them AppleCare+ coverage if it was not offered when they ordered. The email (which is included at the end of this article) reiterated that "every iPhone comes with one year of hardware repair coverage through its limited warranty and up to 90 days of complimentary support." It went on to explain AppleCare+ as an extension of coverage "to two years from the original purchase date of your iPhone and adds up to two incidents of accidental damage coverage, each subject to a $49 service fee." So far so good, but the next part of the email is where things turned odd:

"We noticed you weren't given the opportunity to add AppleCare+ to your iPhone. If you would like to extend your coverage for only $99, please reply to this email."

This is not something that Apple has ever done before (at least, I've never heard of anything like it), and people were understandably worried that this might be an attempt at phishing. However, there were clear signs that these emails were legitimate. First, the subject line of the email message contained the actual order number of the user's iPhone 4S order. Second, the email address for replies was pointed to a legitimate email address with the domain apple.com (and not a phishing address like "app1e.com" or some such). Most phishing attempts want you to send information to a third-party website which has been made to look official, but isn't.

Earlier today I emailed Apple at that address,applestoreinfo@apple.com. I explained that I had ordered through Verizon's website (which never offered AppleCare+), and I'd heard others who hadn't been able to pre-order AppleCare+ had received this email.

Here is the full text of the reply I received:

AppleCare+ will be available for iPhone 4 (8GB) and iPhone 4S pre-order customers until November 14th. After you receive your new iPhone, please contact AppleCare (1-800-275-2273) to complete your purchase.

Sincerely,

Rachel Apple Inc.

There are no guarantees in life, but it seems that Apple recognizes that this did not go as smoothly as planned, so it's making an exception for pre-orders. I assume that Apple will start enforcing the "only available at the time of sale" restriction after the initial pre-orders are fulfilled.

When my iPhone 4S arrives, I plan to call AppleCare immediately and explain my situation again. My hope and expectation is that Apple will be ready to process my AppleCare+ order immediately over the phone, but just in case, I figure it won't hurt to wait to open it until I have someone on the phone to walk me through the process immediately. I will post a followup as soon as my iPhone 4S arrives. (Aside to Verizon: your order confirmation page and email both said that my iPhone would arrive on October 14th, not "ship on" October 14th. I do hope you plan to meet that deadline.)

Here's the full text of the email from Apple that several readers sent in:

Dear Apple Customer,

Thank you for your recent iPhone purchase at the Apple Online Store.

We would like to let you know that every iPhone comes with one year of hardware repair coverage through its limited warranty and up to 90 days of complimentary support. AppleCare+ for iPhone extends your coverage to two years from the original purchase date of your iPhone and adds up to two incidents of accidental damage coverage, each subject to a $49 service fee.

We noticed you weren't given the opportunity to add AppleCare+ to your iPhone. If you would like to extend your coverage for only $99, please reply to this email.

Thank you for shopping with Apple.

Sincerely,

Apple Online Store Team

Apple offering AppleCare+ for iPhone 4 and 4S preorders until November 14th originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 11 Oct 2011 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This week, Apple announced that for the first time you will be able to get a free iPhone with a 2-year contract.

The "catch"? The iPhone is the 3GS (not the 4 or 4s).

Now if you are someone who regularly reads tech websites and who thinks it's perfectly logical to stand in line for hours to get the newest iPhone (or to get up in the middle of the night to order one online), then the iPhone 3GS might seem like a relic to you. But for the millions of cell phone users who don't have smartphones, the iPhone 3GS would be a great purchase.

The hardware is excellent, and it supports AT&T's 3G network. No, it doesn't do "4G" -- but for most Americans, we don't live anywhere with 4G coverage anyway; people looking for a free smartphone probably aren't going to care about 4G, if they even know what it is. Subjectively speaking, my wife actually prefers the 3GS because she says the curved back fits better in her hand.

The iPhone 3GS has a bigger App Store than Android or Windows Phone alternatives. When Apple releases iOS 5 in a few days, the 3GS users will be able to upgrade to it, free of charge.

All told, it's a great phone, and in the USA it is only available on AT&T because Verizon didn't have the iPhone until version 4. It is now available for free (with the same 2 year contract you're going to be stuck with anywhere).

You might think that AT&T would want to grab this opportunity to let people know about this great offer. You might think that, assuming that you haven't watched AT&T bungle nearly every opportunity the iPhone has given it.

The latest example arrived today: an email from AT&T with the Subject: "Huge online selections of free phones from AT&T!" Because I am, at heart, an optimist, I thought "Oh, they are going to start promoting the free iPhone deal."

I was wrong.

Inside the email, there are 3 phones shown (see screenshot above). The first two have tiny, hardware keyboards, and the third (in the background) shows something that looks like an iPhone knockoff but with rounded sides.

No picture of the iPhone 3GS.

No mention of the iPhone 3GS.

They mention "Apple" as one of the manufacturers, but they don't use the name "iPhone" at all. The best-known smartphone brand in the world, and AT&T doesn't even mention it. They can make a "free iPhone" offer that no one else in the USA can make, and they didn't make it.

If you wanted to be extremely generous, maybe you would want to say that the email had a limited amount of space for the image, so they couldn't fit the iPhone into the picture. But even if you click through to the "shop now and save" link, the resulting page doesn't show the iPhone 3GS at all.

Frankly, I don't know if AT&T is purposefully downplaying the iPhone, or whether they want to push people towards the iPhone 4 or 4S if they want "an iPhone" or if they just plain blew an opportunity to promote an advantage that they have over Verizon and Sprint. But I know which one I'd go with if I had to guess.

AT&T misses another iPhone opportunity originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 09 Oct 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple decided to remove the GUI for enabling and disabling FTP from Mac OS X Lion. Generally speaking, that's not a bad move, because most times SFTP is available anywhere FTP is, and SFTP is far superior in terms of security. No one should be using FTP over the Internet.

However, there are some cases when using FTP is perfectly fine. For instance, transferring large files over your own LAN. I do this all the time when transferring DVD rips from one machine to another. Others have mentioned that they have some devices which only support FTP so SFTP isn't an option.

Personally, I prefer FTP on my LAN because, since it is unencrypted, there's no extra processing time needed to encrypt and decrypt the transfer. I'm also willing to admit that there may not be much practical difference in most cases -- that is, I don't know that SFTP is much slower than FTP, but when you're talking about "8 GB at a time" transfers, every little bit matters.

Enabling FTP on Lion

The good news is that Apple did not remove the FTP server (/usr/libexec/ftpd) from Lion, they only removed the GUI to enable or disable it.

The even better news is that there are (at least) two GUI tools for re-enabling it:

1. Lion Tweaks (which also lets you toggle other Lion settings)
2. FTPD Enable App which is an AppleScript app to launch ftpd

For those of us who prefer the command line, there are even instructions on how to enable ftpd using launchd.

ftpd.zsh

I wrote a small shell script called ftpd.zsh which will let you turn ftpd on or off, or check its current status. Usage is very simple:

1. ftpd.zsh --on
2. ftpd.zsh --off
3. ftpd.zsh

#1 will turn it on, #2 will turn it off, #3 will show you whether it is currently on or off.

My script is based on Daniel Smith's launchd commands mentioned above. The script must be run as root, but if it isn't, it will automatically re-launch itself using 'sudo' rather than failing ungracefully. It is also smart enough not to try to turn it on when it is already on, or off when it is already off.

To use the script, download ftpd.zsh and then put it somewhere in your $PATH such as /usr/local/bin and make sure it is executable chmod 755 /path/to/ftpd.zsh. (If any part of that previous sentence didn't make sense to you, I recommend using one of the GUI programs listed above. Using the Terminal is one option, but it's not the only option.)

Once again I repeat: if you are trying to connect to another machine over the Internet in an otherwise unencrypted manner, use SFTP. The only time FTP should be used is when there is no chance of the password being 'sniffed' by a nefarious third party.

You can enable SFTP and SSH in Lion (and previous versions of OS X) by going to System Preferences » Sharing and making sure that "Remote Login" is enabled. When in doubt, use SFTP. But if you need FTP and are aware of the risks, now you have the option of enabling it when needed.

ftpd just one time

If you want to enable ftpd immediately without downloading or installing any scripts or apps, simply enter:

sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist

into Terminal.app. If you want to turn it off afterwards, enter the command

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist

All ftpd all the time

If you use any of the above solutions, ftpd will be disabled again when you reboot the computer. If you want to enable ftpd automatically after every reboot, you will need to edit /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist by looking for the lines

Disabled

and changing them to

Enabled

which will tell Lion to enable ftpd on reboot. Use the launchctl load command shown above to enable it without rebooting.

Note: I recommend that you do not edit ftp.plist unless you absolutely cannot avoid it. I am firmly against tinkering with anything in /System/ but at the end of the day, it's your computer, and if if your situation requires ftpd to be available at all times, editing the plist is the best way to make sure it is always on.

How to enable the FTP server (ftpd) in Lion originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 29 Sep 2011 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Microsoft Word does not support Lion's "Versions" feature yet, but there's no reason to panic. There are a few options that you can use to cobble together a work- around until the Mac BU team updates the Office suite.

Also worth mentioning: although I am focusing on Microsoft Word, the same technique can be used in just about any word processing or text editing application.

"Does the app provide any auto-save settings?"

The first thing to check is whether the application that you are using offers any auto-save or auto-recover options, even if it doesn't support Versions specifically. Microsoft Word offers two auto-save options.

To find them, launch Word, then go to Preferences -> Save and check the options shown below:

The middle underlined option is the most important: it says to save auto-recover information every minute. I think the default is every 10 minutes, but a lot can change in 10 minutes.

The top checkbox is optional, but creating a backup means that you have another way to recover if something goes wrong. Options never hurt. These backups are stored in the same directory as the original, and the filenames end in "~" which is a long-standing convention for backup file names.

The third is also optional, but personally I prefer the older .doc format simply because it's more compatible with other non-Microsoft applications. The XML-based .docx format also got a bad rap previously for compatibility issues with Dropbox, although if you're running the current version of the cloud storage utility you shouldn't have any problems.

(That said, .docx is the better format, not to mention the more modern format. I think of the ".doc or .docx?" choice sort of like choosing between .mp3 or .m4a: the newer formats have technical advantages, but not as many applications support them. The difference, of course, is that it's usually pretty simple to convert between .doc and .docx.)

"Where does the app store files?"

Some applications automatically store files in a certain folder structure, and you can't move them (at least not without getting into creating links, which may or may not work well). Text editors and word processors, however, generally let you choose where to store files you create; Office also has settings for default folders for saving and auto-recovery under Preferences -> File Locations:

Note that setting the default for "Documents" does not mean that you can't change it for individual files later, it just tells Microsoft Office where to start when opening or saving new files.

You can also change the location of the AutoRecover files. I put mine into ~/Dropbox/Backups/Microsoft Office/ because if the computer I'm on dies completely, I can access the data from any other Dropbox-connected account. Is this an unlikely scenario/edge case? Absolutely. Does it hurt to set it anyway? Nope.

"But my application doesn't have those settings!"

Check out Default Folder X which, as the name implies, can set the default folder for just about any application (plus other things).

Dropbox

No doubt you noticed that I suggested using Dropbox to save the files. That's not just because they are available online or on any iOS device. Dropbox also keeps every revision for the past 30 days. That means that every time you hit "Save," a separate version is saved on Dropbox.

Browsing Dropbox revisions isn't as visually slick as using Versions on Lion. To view them, select the file in Finder, and then use the Dropbox icon on your Finder toolbar, or Control-click (right-click, or two-finger click) on the file and use the Dropbox contextual menu.

That will launch the Dropbox website and show you a listing of all the versions, and give you a chance to download them (some file formats can even be previewed online). While Dropbox only saves 30 days' worth of revisions, Dropbox Pro users also have the option to add the Pack-Rat feature which will keep revisions indefinitely.

With every save, you are creating an off-site backup of your latest work, so even if you only use one computer, Dropbox is the place to save your most important and most often changed files.

"But what if I forget to press save? My app doesn't have any sort of auto-save functionality!"

Don't fret if your app doesn't have auto-save; you can add it to any application very simply by using Keyboard Maestro. It's as simple as creating a macro which says "If I am using {insert application name here}, and there is a 'Save' button, press it every X seconds or minutes." I've created just such a rule for Microsoft Word here:

This rule will only run when Microsoft Word is active and there is a menu option for "Save" (which will be disabled if you don't have any files open). If it does find the Save menu item, it will select it. (You could also tell it to press "⌘ + S" but I prefer selecting menu items to keyboard shortcuts.)

With this rule you never have to worry about spending an hour on a Word document only to lose it all when the app crashed and you realized that you had forgotten to save it. If the file isn't saved when the Keyboard Maestro macro runs, it will prompt you to name the file.

(There are other applications like Keyboard Maestro which support the same kind of features, but Keyboard Maestro is the one that I know and use. If you would recommend others, let us know in the comments.)

Versions is great, but there's no need to wait for your app to support it

Versions is a great addition to OS X, and I love not having to remember to save, but only a handful of applications support it at the present time. If you want to (or are required to) use another application, take a few minutes to check out your auto-save options. There are few things more frustrating than losing unsaved work, but the good news is that there are fewer and fewer reasons for that to ever happen.

Emulate Lion's Versions in Microsoft Word originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 25 Sep 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Once upon a time, I had an application which would dim the screen of my Mac down to 0, and then exit. Somewhere along the way I seem to have lost the app and can no longer find it.

Yes, I know I could just hold F1 and do the same thing manually, but I liked having an app that just did it for me.

So I did what any self-respecting geek would do: I wrote a shell script.

Others did the heavy lifting

Let me be clear that my little shell script wrapped in Automator was only a tiny piece of this puzzle.

First I'm going to tell you who did all the heavy lifting, and then you can decide how you want to put the pieces together for yourself. (I highly recommend reading to the end before you do anything.)

Nicholas Riley wrote a C program called brightness which I found via Matt "Danger" West's website, which I found via Google.

Matt includes the source code on his page, or you can download the original 'brightness.c' here and then you can compile it (according to Matt's instructions) using this line:

gcc -std=c99 -o brightness brightness.c -framework IOKit -framework ApplicationServices

Of course that assumes that you have Xcode installed. If you don't, you can either download and install Xcode (warning: it's 3 GB to download and I think it's somewhere between 7-10 GB when installed). If all of that seems like a lot of hassle, Matt also made a pre-compiled binary available for you to download.

Here's what I did

I wrote a shell script (dimscreen.zsh) which looks for brightness at $HOME/bin/brightness.

If it does not find it there, it will attempt to download it "automagically" from my personal website and then install it to $HOME/bin/brightness.

Once brightness is installed, it will dim the screen to 0 and then launch your screensaver.

Why does it launch your screensaver? Because otherwise when you went to use your Mac, you might have forgotten that you set the brightness to 0. If you move the mouse or type, you won't see anything. However if the screensaver is on, one of two things will happen:

1. If you have enabled the preference which requires a password to be entered after your screensaver is turned on, you will see that prompt. (Mac OS X is smart enough to automatically turn the screen brightness up a little for you to see that you need to enter your password.)

2. If you do not require a password to be entered after your screensaver is turned on, my script will turn the brightness up as little as possible after the screensaver exits. That should keep you from getting blinded if you are working at night. Then you can adjust the brightness to whatever level you want.

I took dimscreen.zsh and made it into an app ("Dim Screen.app") using Automator.

I put dimscreen.zsh and the 'Dim Screen.app' and the 'brightness' command (and the source code) all into one nice neat package and put it on my Dropbox as DimScreen.

"How do I use this?"

1) If you are the trusting type (or just impatient), download DimScreen, double click it to 'unarchive' it, and then move the 'Dim Screen.app' to /Applications/ (or wherever you keep your apps) and run it. The first time you run it, make sure that you are online so that it can download the brightness utility. (It will only do that once.)

2) If you are trusting to a point but don't want the app to download anything automatically, make a directory called 'bin' in your home directory (that's the one which has the 'Desktop' and 'Documents' and 'Downloads' directories in it).

Then double-click the DimScreen.tar.bz2 file, and move the 'brightness' file to the ~/bin directryory you just created.

3) If you pride yourself on your distrust, then by all means, download the source code from the links provided above, compile the 'brightness' command on your own, and move it to ~/bin/ (where ~ is your Home directory).

(If you are someone who likes the Terminal.app, you might want to put the dimscreen.zsh script into your $PATH as well, so you can launch it from the command line.)

Once you have it installed, launch it via whatever app launcher you prefer. If you want to make it a "one click launch" you might consider Apptivate, a handy little launcher I reviewed previously. There are other ways to do it, of course, but Apptivate is still my preferred "I want to press this key (or "this key sequence") to run this Application/Script/etc" solution.

P.S. Yes, I know about Control + Shift + Eject

I am sure that some Mac keyboard aficionado will not have been able to wait until the end of the article, and is already writing a comment to tell me that if I press Control + Shift + Eject, then the Mac's screen will turn off.

I know. The problem is, I never remember if it's Control or Command, and do I have to hold down the fn key or not. Plus it's really not the same thing, I don't just want it off, I want it dimmed all the way down.

I still wanted an (even) easier way. I'm used to triggering all sorts of actions via LaunchBar and wanted to be able to dim my screen that way too. When I read on Apple Stack Exchange about someone who couldn't get that keyboard shortcut to work, I went looking for that old app (mentioned at the beginning of this article) and when I couldn't find it, I decided to just roll my own.

Are there other ways of doing this? You bet. If you have a preferred solution, feel free to let us know in the comments.

DimScreen simply dims your screen originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 19 Sep 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Address Book.app on your Mac offers two options for getting information out of your address book: "Export vCard..." or "Address Book Archive..." but you may not have ever known which you should use and which you should avoid as if it were a swarm of bees.

Here's a simple mnemonic: "vCards good, Address Book Archives VERY VERY BAD." Sorry for yelling, but it's true. Address Book Archives can only do one thing: replace your entire address book.

Why is that bad? Let's assume you backup every Monday, and then some Friday you realize that you accidentally deleted some contacts. If your only backup is an Address Book Archive, you have to hope that you won't lose any important information that you've added or changed since Monday.

If you had an export of your vCards, you could merge it with your existing information:

The only real "trick" to exporting vCards is that you have to be sure to select all contacts before choosing File » Export » Export vCard...

Also, if you want to see what Address Book is going to do, click the "Review Duplicates..." button (above) and then click "Keep Both" to see the Old vs New information:

vCards are also a good choice because they can be used by a variety of different programs, whereas Address Book Archives are only useful for Mac OS X's Address Book app

Managing your Mac's Address Book originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 02 Sep 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I am trying to find a way to keep my address book in sync across my:

• iPad
• MacBook Air
• MacBook Pro
• iMac
• Google Apps account
• Gmail account

as well as my wife's

• iPhone
• MacBook
• Google Apps account
• Gmail account

(Aside: by "Gmail account" I mean a regular Google account, as opposed to a "Google Apps" account. Most people interact with it through their Gmail so I'll use "Gmail account" to differentiate between "Google Apps" and "Regular Google" contacts.)

Would you believe that the hardest part is syncing between Google Apps and Gmail accounts? Even if the accounts are linked via multiple sign-in, I can't find any way to keep their address books in sync. You might think Google would make this easy, considering that I am trying to sync between their own products.

First up: Plaxo

My first concerted effort to keep these in sync was to try the most expensive solution: Plaxo. Plaxo started several years ago as an online address book. They went through a dark period where they were best known for auto-spamming everyone in your address book, and then they tried to become a social network. Recently they have renewed their focus on address book syncing, and have amended their previously "overzealous" notification system.

For $60/year, Plaxo offers a Platinum Sync option which is supposed to be able to keep just about anything in sync: Outlook, Gmail (including multiple accounts), Google Apps (including multiple accounts), iPhones, BlackBerry, Mac Address Book, and Windows Mobile.

Platinum sync is described as:

True, real-time sync means your address book is always consistent and current at any sync endpoint. Full read & write access from any supported service or device...

Although Plaxo is expensive, I decided to use the free trial period. If it worked and saved me the time that I would have spent hunting down another solution, perhaps it would be worth the price.

I set it last week, starting with the Google Apps and Gmail accounts with the premise that those were "always on" and the part of my previous sync setup that I had not been able to solve otherwise. I added 4 accounts (two Google Apps and two Gmail) accounts, and just one Mac. I let everything sync, and then went through and fixed problems, merged duplicate contacts, and so forth.

Then I just let it run for a couple of days to see how it would work.

I checked this morning and it showed that my Google and Gmail accounts all sync'd several hours ago (I had been asleep all night, so nothing had changed). It had been more than seven hours since the last change. So how did Plaxo do?

The good news is that my Gmail account and my wife's Gmail account appear to be in perfect sync, both showing 1,851 people listed in "My Contacts." Unfortunately that is the end of the good news.

Her Google Apps account has 1,853 people listed in "My Contacts." My Google Apps account has 2,759 people listed in "My Contacts." And my MacBook Air has 2,110 contacts.

My Plaxo account shows I have 1,853 contacts.

That means that Plaxo has only kept one out of five accounts in sync with itself. That is a drastic failure.

If you think that it's not that bad because two of the other accounts were only off by two (1,851 vs 1,853) let me ask you this: which two contacts are missing? The answer is: I don't have any idea. But if it can't manage to keep 4 Google/Gmail accounts in sync and failed to even raise an alarm that something went drastically wrong with one of them (2,759 vs 1,853?!?!) how am I supposed to trust it?

If Plaxo had sent me a message saying "We noticed that your accounts [X] and [Y] were not in sync, even though no errors were reported during sync" I would have at least trusted that if something went wrong in the future I could count on Plaxo letting me know. Failing to sync is bad, but failing quietly is much worse.

No solution, still looking.

I haven't found a solution yet, and am hoping that perhaps one of TUAW's readers might have an idea.

The crux of the problem is being able to sync one Mac to two Google accounts (one "Google Apps" and one "Gmail"). If I can find a reliable way to do that I will replicate the setup on all of my Macs, and sync my iPad and my wife's iPhone using Google's implementation of ActiveSync.

Has anyone else cracked this nut? If so, let me know in the comments! Meanwhile, I'm already trying out another solution. I'll let you know how that one goes.

Contact sync between Google Apps, Gmail, and Mac originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 30 Aug 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple now offers a US$69 USB installer for Lion. It comes on one of those tiny white USB sticks we first saw with the MacBook Air. I have not used one of the Lion installers, but I have one that came with my MacBook Air: it's only 8 GB, and (this is the really disappointing part) it is not rewritable. When you mount the drive in Disk Utility, it appears like a read-only DVD, not a USB drive, which means that the drive which came with my MacBook Air is now just as useless as my Snow Leopard DVD.

I assume that the Lion USB installer is also 8 GB and not rewritable (I haven't used one personally), which makes it a pretty bad deal. $70 for an 8 GB, read-only USB drive? If you haven't purchased Lion from the Mac App Store, subtract $30, but that still means you are paying $40 for an 8 GB, read-only USB drive.

For $40 you can buy a 32 GB USB drive from Amazon. Or, if you prefer tiny and easy-to-lose USB drives, you can get an 8 GB Verbatim "Tuff 'n' Tiny" drive for $15. Or grab a normal looking 16 GB USB drive for $20 (that's double the capacity for only $5 more).

But what if you want more than just a Lion installer? What if you want an installer and an emergency backup drive that you can boot from and actually use? What if you want something that will be far more useful than a drive you just stick in a drawer until you need to reinstall OS X?

Slip Streaming Away

For a moment, pretend that Apple had not released Lion yet, and you needed to reinstall Snow Leopard on a Mac, but all you had was an original Snow Leopard DVD from when 10.6.0 was first released. What would you do? Chances are that the process would be something like this:

1. Install Snow Leopard 10.6.0.
2. Run Software Update to download the latest Combo Pack for 10.6 and other important updates.
3. Wait for it to download.
4. Wait for it to install.
5. Wait for it to reboot a few times.
6. Run Software Update again to download the newest iTunes and other updates.
7. Repeat steps 3-5.
8. Reinstall your favorite programs.
9. Try to find the registration information for the apps you purchased somewhere other than the Mac App Store.
10. Try to find the installation discs for Microsoft Office or other programs which on CD/DVD.
11. Start setting up the computer the way that you like it: (move the Dock to the left side pinned to the top, remove all the apps that Apple shoves into the Dock by default, change desktop picture, change a bunch of Finder settings, add my MobileMe information, change the Energy Savings, turn on Remote Login and VNC, and so on.)

Rather than give Apple $70 for an installer which will be out of date in a few weeks, I'd rather make my own installer that includes not only OS X with all the latest updates, but also installs my essential apps and preferences.

This is what is known as a "slipstream" and it's fairly simple to do. I would definitely recommend at least a 16 GB drive, but 32 GB would obviously make things easier.

DVD installers are dead. Long live USB.

Apple has made it clear that they consider DVD installers to be dead. The MacBook Air and Mac Mini have already dropped the SuperDrive, and the writing is on the wall for the rest of the Mac hardware lineup.

And good riddance. Will anyone miss them? I won't. For several years the first thing I have done with any CD or DVD installer is make a disk image of it, and use that for installing. Then I don't have to worry about finding the disc or making sure it didn't get scratched, or any of that nonsense.

Your Intel-based Mac can boot from a USB drive (heck, it can even boot from the SD card slot, if yours has one). So rather than make a DVD installer, we're going to make a USB installer. It's not difficult, and what you end up with is cheaper and better than what Apple will sell you.

1. Buy Lion from the Mac App Store.
2. Download Lion from the Mac App Store.
3. Install Lion onto the USB drive.
4. Boot from the USB drive.
5. run Software Update to make sure you are up to date.
6. Install essential applications, especially ones that you did not purchase from the Mac App Store. (For me, that list includes: Pages, Microsoft Office, LaunchBar, 1Password, TextExpander, BBEdit, BusyCal, SizeUp, QuickCursor, Default Folder X, Keyboard Maestro, Hazel, SlimBatteryMonitor, DropCopy, DiskWarrior, SuperDuper, and Dropbox.)
7. Install your preferred browser and extensions. Customize your browser.

Run each app at least twice. (Why twice? Because some apps wait until the second time you launch them to ask you if you want to automatically check for updates, or prompt you for some other action.) Customize your apps to your normal settings and preferences.

When you are satisfied with the setup (don't be surprised if it takes a full day to get the computer configured just the way you like it), clone the USB drive to your main computer drive, and boot from it. Now tuck the USB drive into a pocket in your laptop bag.

When OS X 10.7.2 is released, install it on your computer as usual, and use it for a few days to make sure no problems crop up. If it seems stable, insert your USB drive and boot from it. Run Software Update, and then run the essential apps you installed to see which of them need to be updated.

Repeat for each "point oh" release of OS X.

When Mac OS X 10.8 comes out, you will have a "clean but customized" installer ready. If you've ever avoided doing a 100% "clean install" because you thought it was too much of a hassle, or if you've ever avoided using Migration Assistant because you wanted to avoid bringing over files, preferences, and applications that you don't use, this is a "third way" which should avoid the worse parts of both and keep the best parts. No more having the fiddle with dozens of basic settings (no translucent menu bars, ever!!!) with a new installation, and no worrying that some installer left random files on your Mac from that one app you tried two years ago.

The USB drive also serves as an emergency drive which you can keep with you in your laptop bag. If you use Disk Warrior or some other disk repair tool which needs to be run off of a separate drive, the USB drive will work for that too.

Drawbacks and Caveats

You may have already noticed a potential drawback to this solution versus Apple's official installer: if you have multiple Macs, it would be safest to use a different USB drive for each one of them.

What I Did But Am Not Recommending That You Do: I made a USB installer with my 2010 MacBook Air, and the used it to install Lion on my 2008 MacBook Pro. So far I have not seen any problems, but that should not be taken as canonical evidence that any USB installer made on any Mac can be used with any other Mac. In fact, my experience is statistically insignificant considering all the different variations of hardware out there.

I created the USB installer, and then used SuperDuper to create a Disk Image of it. You can do that in Disk Utility, but I used SuperDuper, because it claims to be smart enough to know what Apple recommends not cloning. (CarbonCopyCloner may also do the same thing. I've been a satisified SuperDuper user for years, so that's what I recommend.) I also saved the disk image on my Drobo, so if something ever happens and I need to go back to a "clean install" of 10.7.1, I can do so easily. The MacBook Air is my main computer, so that was the one I wanted to make sure I used for the clone image. If problems crop up later with the MacBook Pro, it will be less of a disruption to wipe that drive and reinstall Lion. If that happens, I'll buy another USB thumbdrive to use exclusively with it. Your mileage may vary. Caveat Emptor. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

This deal is getting worse all the time... (aka "More thoughts on the Apple Lion USB installer")

If you buy the Lion USB installer and do not buy Lion through the Mac App Store, what happens if you lose the USB installer?

Maybe you thought: "Oh well, no big deal, I'll just use Lion Recovery." Wrong! Better re-read the fine print on Apple's USB Lion installer: "When you install OS X Lion using the USB thumb drive, you will not be able to reinstall OS X Lion from Lion Recovery. You will need to use the USB thumb drive to reinstall OS X Lion." If you lose the USB drive, prepare to spend another $30 to download Lion from the Mac App Store, or $70 to buy another easy-to-lose, read-only USB installer from Apple.

Look, Apple obviously felt that they had to offer a USB installer, but they clearly don't like it, and they have done everything possible to dissuade you from using it: they waited a few weeks after Lion was released before releasing it, they made way more expensive than it needs to be, and are making it less useful than downloading Lion from the Mac App Store. You can take a hint, right? This is one of the few times in life when making something is not only cheaper than buying in a store, but it's much better too.

Build a better Lion installer originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 22 Aug 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Since it doesn't come with an optical drive, giving MacBook Air buyers a DVD of the operating system wouldn't be very helpful. That's why Apple's lightest laptop comes with the USB Software Reinstall Drive -- a very small white USB drive. Sometimes USB flash drives are referred to as "Thumb Drives," but this one is more like the size of a baby's finger.

The USB stick that comes with the MacBook Air is the best way -- and in many situations, the only way -- to restore/reinstall your MacBook Air if something goes wrong. If you have the US$100 external USB SuperDrive, then you can try to use a DVD, but I found that my MacBook Air wouldn't even boot from my original Snow Leopard DVD. (I believe this is because the DVD's build of Snow Leopard is a lower version number than the Air originally shipped with, but I am not sure.)

Since my MacBook Air first arrived I have been afraid of losing the USB recovery drive. According to someone on the Apple Discussion Forums, Apple may be willing to provide you with a new one, free of charge, if you lose yours, but what I really wanted was a backup. (I have done the same thing with my Snow Leopard DVD when I bought it, just in case it was lost or damaged.) In this case, I wanted to duplicate it onto another USB drive.

I tried 'cloning' the Reinstall Drive using SuperDuper!, which completed without error, but after it was done, my MacBook Air would not boot with the new USB drive.

Apple created the drive so that when it is mounted by OS X, it appears as a DVD, not a USB drive. This means that it was not available for me to use as a "Restore" source in Disk Utility. I could not find any way to make a copy of the disk image from Disk Utility. (If one exists, I'd be happy to hear about it.)

That's when my GeekInstincts kicked in.

If Apple wanted me to treat it as a DVD drive, that's exactly what I would do. In the past I have backed up my OS X DVDs using the Terminal, and I wondered if the same thing would work here. (Spoiler alert! It did.)

Duplicating a CD or DVD the Unix way

Rather than using a GUI program such as Roxio Toast or Burn, we're going to use the Terminal. Why? Because unlike those two programs, the Unix way is free, simple, and "just works." Plus, you end up with a disk image, which you should be able to use to burn an actual DVD on just about any computer.

The steps are fairly simple:

1. Create an .iso file of the official Reinstall Drive
2. Mount the .iso file in Disk Utility
3. Mount a generic USB drive
4. Use the "restore" function in Disk Utility to copy the .iso file to the generic USB device.
5. Save the .iso file in case you lose the Reinstall Drive and your generic backup.

Note: you can do this same process with any CD/DVD and any Mac. In the past I have done it with Microsoft Office, iWork, and others. This article is addressing the MacBook Air specifically, but the same steps would work equally well for other media.

The Disclaimer

We are going to be using Terminal.app (found in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder in the Finder) to run a few commands. If you are not careful in the Terminal, you can do some serious damage. Then again, the same thing is true about a car. So, look both ways, stop if you aren't sure about something, and (whenever possible) copy & paste commands rather than typing them manually, to avoid typos.

The command we will be using is /bin/dd, which I suggest you think of as "Data Duplication." Wikipedia says that it probably originally meant "Data Description," and it is often jokingly referred to as "data destroyer" or other scary-sounding names.

Read slowly, take your time. There should be no real danger unless you are extremely careless. Don't proceed unless you know what you are doing and have verified your backups.

Step By Step

1) Insert your Reinstall Drive and make sure it appears in the Finder

2) Open Terminal.app (in Finder press Command-Shift-U to quickly go to the Utilities folder)

3) In Terminal, type (or paste) these following commands:

   DEVICE=`mount | fgrep 'Mac OS X Install' | awk '{print $1}'` 

 if [ "$DEVICE" != "" ]; then ; echo $DEVICE ; fi 

You should see something like "/dev/disk?s?" where the ?s are replaced by numbers. If all you get a blank line, something went wrong. Make sure the drive appears in Finder.

4) Still in Terminal, type/paste this line:

   diskutil unmount "/Volumes/Mac OS X Install" 

which should tell you "Volume Mac OS X Install on disk?s? unmounted" (again, where ? and ? will be numbers). This will unmount but not eject the drive.

5) READ this entire step, and make sure you understand it, before you do anything.

Now we will tell dd to:

a) read input from the "$DEVICE" named above. This is the "Input File" which is identified using if=/dev/disk?s? (where ? are numbers)

b) copy what you read (in step 'a') out to a new file. This is the "Output File" which is identified using of=WhateverYouWant.iso (I went with airinstall.iso for simplicity and clarity).

c) We also need to tell dd to use a Block Size of 2048 (this last part may not be 100% necessary, but I have seen it suggested and it is how I have done mine, and it worked).

If you put all of that together, it should look like this:

   /bin/dd if="$DEVICE" of="$HOME/Desktop/airinstall.iso" bs=2048 

WARNING: if, by some bizarre chance, you already have a file named "$HOME/Desktop/airinstall.iso" be sure to move or rename it before you enter that line. Otherwise it will be overwritten.

(The Output File does not have to be saved to the Desktop, I just chose that because it is a place most people will notice.)

If you see an error "dd: /dev/disk?s?: Resource busy" then the device did not unmount properly in step #4.

If you copied my "DEVICE=" line above in Step #3, you should be able to use "$DEVICE" in the 'dd' line to automatically fill in the proper device.

Note!

• the 'dd' command may run for 20-30 minutes, or longer. Don't panic. Just go do something else for awhile.

• nothing new will appear on the screen until 'dd' is finished.

• When it is done you should see something like this:

  3738954 0 records in
  3738954 0 records out

The "records in" should equal the "records out" (although your number might not be the same as mine).

6) Assuming everything went as expected, you can now tell the computer to eject the Apple Reinstall Drive by entering this line in Terminal:

   diskutil eject "$DEVICE" 

It should tell you that the device was ejected. If so, it will be safe to physically disconnect the Apple Reinstall Drive from the USB port of your computer.

7) Open the .iso file in Disk Utility. If you used my /bin/dd line above, you can now enter:

   open -a "Disk Utility" "$HOME/Desktop/airinstall.iso" 

and Disk Utility will open and the .iso will appear in the left sidebar.

Note: we are now done with Terminal.app. You may quit it and switch over to Disk Utility for the next steps.

8) You should see airinstall.iso in the left side of Disk Utility window. If you look at the bottom of the window you will see it is not mounted. Click the "Open" button on the top toolbar to mount the .iso file.

NOTE: When you mount the .iso file, Finder will probably jump up and show you the window like an excited schoolchild. If that happens, just switch back to Disk Utility.

This is what Disk Utility will look like after you mount the .iso:

Note that the capacity it shown, and the open button is now a greyed out "Mount" button, and the "Eject" button is now available.

9) Insert your generic USB drive now. You will need an 8GB USB drive. I'm usng a SanDisk because it's what I already had.

Here is Disk Utility showing my USB drive. A few important things to notice:

Make sure the drive is formatted as "Mac OS Extended" or "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)."

The "Name" of your drive isn't important. Notice mine is "USB_MOUNT" but the important thing is that I have it selected in Disk Utility.

10) We are now going to tell Disk Utility to "Restore" the .iso's "Mac OS X Install" to "USB_MOUNT" by doing three things:

a) click the "Restore" button (see red box below)

b) Control-Click ("right click") on the "Mac OS X Install" line, and select "Set as source" as shown here. You could also just drag the Mac OS X Install volume over to the Source: field in the right-hand pane.

c) Control-Click on the "Name" of your generic USB drive (mine is "USB_MOUNT") and choose "Set as destination." Again, you could alternatively drag-and-drop the volume icon into the blank Destination field on the right side, per the onscreen instructions.

11) When you are ready to restore, it should look something like this:

If everything looks correct, click the "Restore" button on the bottom right. Disk Utility will give you a "human readable" explanation of what it is about to do:

Read through it to make sure that you haven't accidentally swapped the Source and Destination fields. When you click "Erase" OS X will prompt you for your administrator password. Once you enter it, the restore process will begin.

This took 30 minutes on my MacBook Air, so it's a good time to take that Apple Software Reinstall Drive and put it somewhere safe. (I highly recommend putting it back in the box your MacBook Air came in. You kept the box, right?)

Once the Restore Process completes, Finder will most likely mount the generic USB drive.

Disk Utility will look like this:

Now we're ready to test it, so quit all of your applications, logout, and shutdown the computer.

The Proof is in the Booting

The only real test that matters is whether or not you can boot your MacBook Air with the generic USB drive.

After the computer id turned off, make sure that:

• the official Apple Softwware Reinstall Drive is not connected to your MacBook Air
• the generic USB drive is connected to the MacBook Air

Then power the computer on and press the Option/Alt key.

In a few moments you should a screen offering the option of booting from your hard drive or the USB drive. Choose the USB drive.

When it finishes booting, it will start into the "Install OS X" screens and ask you to select a language. Don't panic. Select a language, and then at the next screen you can exit out of the installer.

(If you want to set an Open Firmware Password, this would be a good time to do it, since you can't set it when booting off the internal drive, but if you do, remember that if you forget the password, a trip to the Apple Store is your only hope of recovering it.)

That's it

The USB drive won't work on any other computer, but it can add a little peace of mind to know that you have another copy of your restore drive in case you ever need it.

Make a backup copy of the MacBook Air USB Software Reinstall Drive originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 10:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

How many times have you gone to send an email, only to be distracted or even derailed by something that you found in your Inbox? I found a solution which is completely free, integrates completely with OS X, and which guarantees that it won't happen to me again. I even found a (partial) solution for iOS devices as well.

The Problem

One night around 11 p.m. I remembered that I needed to send an email to someone so it would be there for them first thing in the morning, so I launched Gmail (actually Mailplane) as I started to formulate the message in my head as I waited for it to load. Then it happened. I saw a message from someone that I wished I hadn't seen. I could have tried to ignore it, but my brain isn't fooled that easily.

Once I saw the From: line, it almost would have been worse not to read it, because then I would have been wondering what it said. To be clear, I couldn't really do anything about the message. If I had just gone to bed without checking my email, I would have seen it the next morning when I was at the office. But my brain had already started thinking and processing. I read the message, I started to think about what I needed to do in response to it, and other people I need talk about it.

Almost 30 minutes went by before I remembered, "Didn't I come over here to start writing an email to someone? Steve. I was going to tell Steve something. What was I going to tell him?" Now hopefully your brain works better than mine does (I did eventually remember the original message I was going to send), but if you have ever tried to get into the habit of checking email less often you might have run into this same problem:

Email apps expect that when you want to send email you also want to check email. (Merlin Mann recently mentioned this problem on an episode of Back To Work, which is what reminded me about it.) I ran into this problem when I tried to start checking email once or twice a day. Quitting my email app was easy, but then a few minutes later I realized that I needed to send an email. So I launched my email app again. Hey look, new email!

Solutions which didn't work

1) "Just ignore it." Ideally this wouldn't be a problem because by sheer force of will I could just ignore messages which are unread and untended. Most of the time I am very good about that. I have an extensive and elaborate set of Gmail filters which almost guarantee that nothing ends up in my Inbox directly. Everything is sorted to where it belongs, and when the time comes I can check by various folders (sorry, "labels") later on. But, at least for me, any system which depends on sheer force of will is like building a sandcastle at the beach. No matter how tightly I pack the sand, eventually the tide is coming in. I once complained that I couldn't go into a bookstore without buying a book, even if I just intended to browse. I always seemed to find something. My friend replied, "Look, if you know this about yourself, you have two choices: either don't go into the bookstore, or accept the fact that if you do you're going to buy a book. Stop beating yourself up over it." (It's nice to have smart friends.)

2) "Use a Dashboard Widget!" This was actually the first solution I tried. I found a Dashboard Widget which would send email through Gmail. It seemed like the ideal solution: press F12, write an email, click send, voilà! But it didn't work well for two reasons: it didn't autocomplete email addresses from my address book. (How many people's email addresses do you have memorized?) When I clicked on an email address on a web page, or from my address book, or any other source, it launched my default mail client.

3) "Write and save email drafts somewhere other than my mail client, then copy/paste them into my mail client later." I tried keeping email drafts in nvALT when I wasn't checking email, and then when I was ready to check email, I would copy each message into a new "Compose" window, and send it. This isn't a bad solution, but it didn't fix the 'click on an email address' problem, plus it created another step every time I wanted to send an email message. Then there was the potential problem of forgetting to send the messages later, or needing to send a message immediately.

4) "Just turn off fetching new messages." Another seemingly foolproof method that I tried was simply turning off auto-fetching of new messages. This doesn't work very well in Gmail, of course, because there is no "fetching" in Gmail, when you login, messages are just there. Mailplane will let you turn on "Do Not Disturb" which keeps it from notifying you that new messages have arrived, but you can still see them if you look. If you use Mail.app or another client, this can work, except that many clients will automatically fetch new email whenever they are launched, even if they are set to manually fetch messages. Then there's the whole "Oh, while I'm here I'll just take a look at this other folder really quick..." problem. Turns out this is just another variation of the "Just Ignore It" idea.

The solution that worked

Finally it occurred to me that what I needed was a second email client, one which was setup only to send, and not to receive. I tried Mail.app and Thunderbird but found that neither one of them worked the way that I had hoped. Then I remembered Mailsmith, the mail client formerly developed by the folks at Bare Bones but which owned by Stickshift Software.

Mailsmith was ideal for several reasons: first, Mailsmith understands the concept of a "Send Only" account. I didn't have to try to "trick it" into working that way, it was happy to do so if I just told it that's what I wanted. That was the most important criteria. Since it is a real mail client, I can set it as the OS X default and have new messages started in it, plus it will auto-complete email addresses as I type them. As bonus, Mailsmith can also be configured to create a new blank email message whenever the application is launched or activated by either clicking on the dock icon or activate it via LaunchBar, Alfred, etc when it is already running. Since all I'm using it for is sending emails, that was nice icing on the cake.

As a long-time user of Gmail/Mailplane, I'm used to having to wait between the time I launch the browser/app and when the site actually loads. Even on a decent connection, launching Mailplane and waiting for a new compose window can take 15 seconds. Not an overly long amount of time, but Mailsmith is ready is about 1 second. That's a significant difference. Mailsmith can also easily work offline, allowing you to queue messages for later delivery.

Lastly, Mailsmith is free. That was the least important criteria, but a free solution that works well is always a nice bonus.

Configuring Mailsmith

Setting up Mailsmith is a fairly straightforward process. I'll outline the process for sending through a Gmail account (a Google Apps account should work the same way), but you could do the same thing with any email account.

Step 1) Download and install Mailsmith. If you have another mail client already installed and configured on your computer, Mailsmith might offer to import your settings. I recommend choosing Mailsmith Default and entering them yourself.

Step 2) In Mailsmith's preferences under "Application" look for "Default Mail Client" and click the "Set to Mailsmith" button if you want Mailsmith to automatically respond to email addresses clicked from other applications (web browsers, Address Book, etc). This is optional but highly recommended.

Step 3) Immediately under the "Set to Mailsmith" button, look for "At Startup" and select the "New mail message" radio button. That will tell Mailsmith to create a new, blank email message whenever it is launched or activated by clicking on the dock icon or using a launcher such as LaunchBar, QuickSilver, or Alfred.

Step 4) Configure your account. Mailsmith puts Account settings under the "Window" menu, as shown here:

In the accounts window, on the "Checking" tab, leave everything blank like this:

That tells Mailsmith not to even attempt to fetch email from this account, which it is happy to do.

Then, under the "Sending" tab, enter the information as required. Google provides instructions for sending via SMTP through Gmail which we need to enter here and in the "Advanced" tab (we'll get to that).

The "Account Name" and "Sender's Name" can be whatever you want. The "Sender's Name" will appear in the From line in your outgoing email. The Account name is just used for reference.

Make sure the SMTP Server Name is "smtp.gmail.com" and check the box next to "USe SMTP Authentication" then put in your Gmail email address and password in the SMTP User ID and Password fields, respectively.

Note: The "Reply Address" field must be filled in, but Gmail appears to ignore whatever you put in it. It will not set a Reply-To: header. If you want to do that, try adding one to the "Headers" tab.

Finally, the "Advanced" tab needs to have the SMTP Port set to 465, and make sure that SSL is set to "Required" because Gmail does require it.

After that it's a simple matter of starting a new email message. Mailsmith will read email addresses from the OS X Address Book and auto-complete as you type.

If you have more than one account that you want to be able to send from, you will have to repeat this process for each of them, but you can also set keyboard shortcuts to determine which account to send a new message from. See below for more.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Mailsmith uses "Command + E" to "Send Now" (or Message » Send from the menu bar) or you can tell Mailsmith to queue your outgoing mail by using "Comamnd + Option + E" (or Message » Queue for Sending from the menu bar). Queued messages will not be sent until you choose "Send Queued Mail" either from the Mail menu or by pressing Command + Shift + K. (Queued messages cannot be edited, but can be deleted.)

If you are used to the "Command + Shift + D" keyboard shortcut from Mail.app (and Mailplane), you may want to go to System Preferences » Keyboard then click on "Keyboard Shortcuts" and "Application Shortcuts." Click on the + (see the red box in the image below) to create a new shortcut.

Set the Application to Mailsmith, the Menu TItle to "Send Now" (note that both words are capitalized) and enter the Command + Shift + D shortcut. It should look like this:

If you add more than one account, you can setup keyboard shortcuts to send from each account. Look under File » New from Account and you will see each account listed by the "Account Name" that you added. Just make sure each one of those is unique and you can set a keyboard shortcut for it by repeating the process above and putting the Account Name in instead of "Send Now."

What about iOS?

Once I set this up on my Mac, I realized that it would also be nice to have on my iPad as well. I am not aware of any 3rd-party mail clients for iOS, and everything I found on the App Store seemed to be focused more on notifying me about incoming mail rather than sending it.

I discovered the iOS solution via TUAW's own Dave Caolo who wrote about a (free) app called Draftpad on his personal site, 52Tiger.net.

Draftpad is extremely fast. It launches and is immediately ready for me to start typing. When you finish typing a message in Draftpad, you can opt to send it to many different places using what Draftpad calls Assists. These will send your message to email, SMS, Twitter, or any of a bunch of other destinations using their extensive Assist Library. You can even create your own. Do you often send messages to your spouse, coworker, or maybe to yourself via Simplenote or Evernote? Create an "assist" which will automatically fill in the "To:" line of your email address. Write your message, send it to Mail, fill in the "To" line, and tap send. Couldn't be any easier. After it goes, it will bring you back to Draftpad.

Draftpad is available on the app store for iPad or iPhone/iPod touch.

Try it, you might like it

At first it felt a little strange thinking of "writing email" as a separate task than "reading email" but I have really come to enjoy it. Naturally, I still reply to emails from within Gmail when I am reading email, but when I'm ready to be done checking email, this setup ensures that I can do that without hindering my ability to send email.

If you use Gmail or any webmail for your outgoing mail, you'll be amazed how much faster it is to dash off a quick email using a local client. I love Gmail with Mailplane, and I'm never tempted to use an IMAP client instead, but I do like the sending speed. The ability to write emails offline is a nice plus too.

One final (tangentially related) note: another key to staying away from your incoming email is to make sure that you are not storing information that you need in your email. If you need to followup on something in your email, put it into OmniFocus or Evernote or Simplenote, or whatever you use to keep track of your tasks. Storing it in your email makes it harder to find, plus it keeps you tied to your inbox.

Use Mailsmith to create a "send-only" email account originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 18 Jun 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Since Apple's iCloud announcement, we have received a steady stream of messages from people with the same problem: multiple Apple IDs.

Some readers have been managing two Apple IDs on purpose and are now frustrated about the fact that Apple is restricting logins for automatic downloads. Others have only just discovered that they have two IDs. Most of them have already contacted Apple, only to be given the same answer without exception: Apple will not consolidate Apple ID accounts.

One of the Frequently Asked Questions About Apple IDs is "I have multiple Apple IDs. Is there a way for me to consolidate them into a single Apple ID?" The answer: "At this time, Apple IDs cannot be consolidated."

The optimists will interpret "at this time" as meaning that this could change in the future. The word "cannot" is also open to interpretation. I suspect Apple's intended meaning is "there is no mechanism in place to do this" rather than "it would be impossible for us to do this if we really wanted to." After all, assuming that the apps are still available, it seems like it would be a relatively straightforward matter of "gifting" the apps from one account to the other. However, if that has to be done manually for each person facing this issue, it could be quite time-consuming.

I discovered that I had inadvertently created two Apple IDs not long after the iOS App Store appeared. One of the nice things about the App Store has always been that you could re-download purchases free of charge. While checking my email one day, I realized that I had been billed twice for the same application. I contacted Apple's usually excellent iTunes support (since the App Store was brand new, there was no separate App Store support channel yet), and I informed them of the mistake. The customer service person replied that she could not see a duplicate charge and asked me to forward both receipts to her. That was when I realized what had happened. The usernames were identical, except that one ended in "@gmail.com" and the other was the same username, but without a domain name. (You may recall Marco Arment wrote about this problem regarding Instapaper accounts, indicating it was responsible for "[m]any of Instapaper's top support issues.")

When I realized what had happened, I contacted Apple support again, asking if they could merge my accounts. The answer I was given was not just "no" but 'absolutely not, under any circumstances ever.' While I am paraphrasing the support rep's response, that captures the spirit of it. I asked nicely, I complained, I sent separate requests hoping to get someone else, and I have asked again periodically whenever it occurred to me to do so. The answer remains a resolute and unwavering "no."

Apple has no obligation to take any steps to correct my stupidity. Regardless of how much money the company has made or how much cash it's sitting on, at the end of the day, I am a grownup and responsible for my own actions. Because I did not pay close enough attention to what I was doing, I brought this on myself. [Users with MobileMe accounts that conflict with their Apple IDs may have created them completely without realizing it; see threads here and here. -Ed.]

Music purchases through iTunes were easy enough to solve: I upgraded to "iTunes Plus" whenever possible, which removed the DRM. Unfortunately there is no equivalent for App Store purchases. Since I realized this shortly after the App Store opened, I have been able to avoid repeating the mistake and only had to repurchase a few apps. However, my Apple Support Profile shows almost all of my Mac/iOS hardware as belonging to one Apple ID, and all of my App Store purchases belong to the other Apple ID. It is a minor annoyance, at most, for me.

Others have not been so fortunate, and with the advent of iCloud, the problem seems to be looming ever larger for some people. Obviously, we have no way of knowing how many people are faced with it, but given the size of the iTunes and App Store customer base, even a small percentage represents a significant number of people.

Could Apple change this policy?

It would seem so. From the outside looking in, it does not appear to be an insurmountable technological problem, but more one of record-keeping; addressing it would clearly help a small-but-not-negligible number of Apple customers.

Do I expect Apple to change this policy? No, I don't. The company seems to have dug in its heels on this issue early on, and I have no reason to think that the policy will change now. We can only speculate as to why Apple enforces this hard-and-fast rule; a strong suspicion voiced by Mike Rose on this topic is that Apple's licensing agreements with content owners (music labels and movie studios in particular) have some sand in the gears when it comes to merging or splitting content libraries.

[It's also possible that Apple cannot afford to get bogged down in exception handling and legal vagaries across 50 states and scores of countries when, for instance, a brace of divorce lawyers call and request that a 20,000-song iTunes library be split up between their clients' accounts. Much simpler to have a consistent answer of "We can't do that, sorry." -Ed.]

On the other hand, I did not expect Apple to intervene in the Lodsys issue or back down on subscription pricing, and the unveiling of iCloud would probably be the best time for Apple to change this policy--if it ever will.

If you think Apple should change this policy, you might be inclined to send a politely-worded message through the proper channels. And, no, emailing Steve Jobs directly is not proper channels. On the other hand, I cannot tell you exactly what the proper channel is. I looked at Apple's Feedback Page, but there is no feedback channel for the App Store, which seems very odd. I also looked at the links for iTunes, iPad, and iPhone/iPod touch feedback, but none of them lend themselves to giving App Store feedback.

The Apple ID FAQ does not offer any way to contact Apple about your Apple ID. Nor does the Apple ID support page. Nor does the Apple ID site or the Apple ID recovery page.

Finally I found the iTunes Support page, which has a section titled "iTunes Store Account and Billing." If you select that, and then "Managing your Account," that may be the most appropriate route to give feedback.

And remember: the person who will read your message will not be in a position to change the policy (even if you did hear that your best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with a girl who did get her Apple IDs consolidated), so state your case politely and succinctly in order to let your voice be heard, and then move on. If Apple changes the policy, great. If not, well, then you're no worse off than you are today.

Customers with multiple Apple IDs frustrated by Apple's "no consolidation" policy originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 17 Jun 2011 08:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

When I heard that Reeder for Mac was being developed, I was thrilled. Ever since I had moved to Google Reader, I had been looking for a Mac app which was more compelling to use than the web interface. Reeder for iPad (US$5) was so good that I used it almost exclusively. Could Reeder make the jump from iOS to Mac?

I purposefully waited until the first few public beta versions of Reeder for Mac were released, to let the early bugs get sorted out. When I started to hear good reports about it on Twitter, I downloaded it and tried it for myself. Initially, it felt awkward. I couldn't stop noticing that this was an iOS app ported to Mac OS X. It just didn't feel right. So I deleted it. A few beta releases later, I tried again, but the result was the same: I used it briefly, then gave up.

When the final version arrived, I went to the official website hoping to find a demo version that I could try before buying. (I will pause briefly to repeat my firm belief that the biggest shortcoming of the iOS and Mac App Stores is the lack of full-featured demos.) At US$10, Reeder was above my "just buy it to try it" threshold. I found screenshots, but those are hardly enough to give a good feel for the app.

For a few days I continued my routine of using a Fluid.app browser for Google Reader on the Mac and Reeder on my iPad, but eventually curiosity got the better of me and I dropped my Alexander Hamilton on it. Despite my first rule for purchasing software, I decided that even if it didn't meet my needs now, it was likely to be popular enough that it would continue to be developed and improved.

Five minutes later I knew I had made the right choice.

Make no mistake, Reeder still feels like an iOS app which jumped to the Mac, but it has pushed through the awkward teenage years into a promising young-adulthood. That may be due to the fact that Lion has already started to push acceptance of iOS ideas and concepts coming "back to the Mac," or maybe the app itself has changed enough to make the jump seem less dramatic.

But enough with the vagaries of opinion, let's take a closer look at what's there.

Keyboard Shortcuts and 3rd Party Services

The first thing I loved was the keyboard shortcuts. Clearly that's not something you're going to find in an iOS app, so this is one place where it really stands out on the Mac. There are built-in, easily configurable keyboard commands for just about anything you could imagine. Not just the obvious ones like J/K for previous and next, but also shortcuts to send the current article to other services such as Pinboard, Instapaper, ReadItLater, Delicious, or Zootool. You can also send articles to Twitter, Instapaper or Google's mobilizer, email, or your web browser.

If you have used Reeder on the iPad, you are used to being able to easily send articles from it to those services, and on the Mac it is even easier. Just like the iPad version, you can disable services you do not use. For example, I use Pinboard but not Delicious, so I left Pinboard enabled and dropped Delicious.

But that's not all your fingers can do

Drawing from the app's iOS roots, Reeder also supports gestures for swiping up, down, left, and right, as well as pinch open or close, letting you choose what action each gesture triggers.

I am still getting used to these sorts of gestures on Mac OS X, but I think it is clear that they are part of its future. You are not required to use them; they are simply another way of controlling the app instead of clicking on menus or toolbar icons (also highly configurable) or keyboard shortcuts.

Readability: an RSS lover's best friend

Reeder's built-in "Readability" feature pulls full articles from sites which only offer truncated RSS feeds. To try it out by clicking a button that's available at the bottom of the article pane, or with a keyboard shortcut (G), which toggles it on or off.

If you want to go beyond the Readability format and integrate Reeder with your Readability account, you will find support for that is also built-in to the app, with the sign-in preference right below your Google account information.

Nice Extras

You can determine exactly when articles may be marked as read, pre-load articles (either in a web-browser or with Readability) and more. You can also change numerous appearance settings to make it look more or less like an iOS app with room for tweaking.

I was also glad to see that Reeder let me set the "Unread Count" to either "badge" (which looks like iOS) or "icon" (which looks nicely Mac-ish), or disable it altogether. It also gives granularity of control over syncing unread, starred, and shared items, as well as notes.

What's different and what's "missing"

Unlike most Mac apps, Reeder uses many keyboard shortcuts without a modifier key (Command, Option, Shift). As I mentioned before, some of these will be familiar to you if you have used the Google Reader website, and I would not say that they were a bad idea, just a different one. I do know that many years ago Opera dropped one-key shortcuts because they found it led to user confusion when keys were accidentally pressed either by the users themselves, or (and I am not making this up) their cats. Fortunately the most potentially "damaging" keystroke (Mark All As Read) requires confirmation before it is executed (unless your cat manages to press Shift and A simultaneously, or you turn off the confirmation option in preferences).

So far my only feature request (other than a demo version) is the ability to easily switch between Google accounts (a la Gmail accounts in Mailplane), but I suspect that is not a feature many users will use. At the very least, its absence in 1.0 release is understandable, and it may be enough of an "edge case" that it might never be added.

Others have mentioned the lack of "tabs" as a drawback. While I understand the complaint, I find that I much prefer to read one article at a time. Still, I would not be surprised to see that added in a later version if demand continues. After all, this is only 1.0.

Finally, I was surprised to see that there was no "full screen mode" available. Perhaps that feature will be added when Lion is released.

Summary

Reeder succeeds in crossing over from iOS by bringing the best features that users have come to expect and adding in a sprinkling of Mac-specific features. While it may seem even more at home once Lion arrives, I am glad to have it today on my Mac. If you already know and love Reeder on the iPad, chances are good you will love it on the Mac too. If you are not an iPad user and are looking for a clean, feature-rich Google Reader client for Mac, Reeder should definitely be on your list to check out.

Gallery

Check out Reeder's menus in the gallery below. Screenshots of the UI are available on the official Reeder website.

Gallery: Reeder 1.0 Menus

Reeder makes a successful leap from iOS to Mac originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 15 Jun 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

As we mentioned in our what Mac owners need to know after today's WWDC announcements roundup, Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) will be required for Lion.

If you are using Leopard (10.5) or less, you must first upgrade to Snow Leopard.

Amazon shows it backordered 2-5 weeks, (available from some third parties), but the online Apple Store has it for US$29 plus shipping. Note that if you are running a version of Mac OS X before 10.5, you should buy the $129 Mac Box Set ($99.99 at Amazon), which includes Snow Leopard, iLife '11 and iWork, but that is a legal/moral obligation, not a technical one. The Snow Leopard DVD will work on any supported Mac, regardless of which OS is installed on it (or even on a new drive).

Not sure what version you are running? Go to the Apple menu and select "About This Mac" and look in the window that appears (see image above). If it says anything starting with 10.6, you are running Snow Leopard. Anything less? Time to upgrade.

(If you are running Snow Leopard, make sure you are running at least version 10.6.6 and get the Mac App Store app!)

You may also want to make sure your Mac is compatible. Apple specifies "[y]our Mac must have an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor to run Lion." That information is shown in the "Processor" line of the "About Mac" window, shown above.

If Lion is your future, make sure Snow Leopard is your present originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Jun 2011 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Most people know that there is a free Kindle app for iOS that will let you read books from Amazon's Kindle store. Apple also offers a free iBooks app. Fewer people have heard of Project Gutenberg, where you can download over 30,000 free books, and fewer still have heard of the Magic Catalog from FreeKindleBooks.org.

The "Magic Catalog" isn't where Harry Potter shops -- it's a "book" containing nothing except links to other books. You can use the search feature of your favorite e-book reader to look for books; with a few taps, you can have the new book on your iOS device without ever needing to go through iTunes and without spending a penny.

The easy way

If you already have the iBooks or Kindle apps installed, simply go to Magic Catalog on your iOS device and tap the appropriate link for whichever app you are using (MOBI Edition for Kindle, EPUB Edition for iBooks).

The slightly harder way

If, for some reason, you'd prefer to download the books to your computer and transfer them to your iOS device (or if you already have .epub, .mobi, or other e-books on your computer), you can do so using iTunes. If you have the Kindle app installed, it will appear under the "File Sharing" section in the "apps" tab, and you can add books there.

You may notice that iBooks does not appear in the "File Sharing" section. To transfer books to iBooks, simply drag to the "Library" section of your iTunes library (see this page at Apple.com for more details).

Two minor flaws

Kindle: When using the Magic Catalog with the Kindle app, you'll find one glitch in the process. When you tap on a book in the catalog, the Kindle app opens a blank page with an arrow at the top left. You have to tap on that arrow to open the page in Safari, which will then show you a link to open the book in the Kindle app. Then when you go back to the Kindle app, you have to tap the "Done" button on the top right in order to see the new book. It's a minor annoyance, at worst.

Kindle and iBooks: When you are on the web page to download the book, you will not see the name of the book; you'll see something like "pg23.mobi" followed by the size and a button to open the book in the Kindle app (or iBooks if you have the EPUB version). Once you open the book in the appropriate application, it will show the correct name.

Magic Catalog brings free books to your iBooks or Kindle collection originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 05 Apr 2011 04:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

A friend was looking to replace her wireless router, and I suggested a refurbished AirPort Extreme. New units sell for around US$180, but refurbished models from Apple are $130. Still, that's significantly more expensive than the average Linksys router you'll find at Walmart or Best Buy. Is it worth it?

There's no scientific answer to that question, and reasonable people can disagree, but I will share my experiences and my decisions. First, I don't claim that my knowledge is exhaustive of all makes and models. I have used several Linksys models (including some with DD-WRT), a few Netgear models and a few Belkin ones. I have also used AirPort Extreme units since the days when they looked like spaceships. In every case, the non-Apple hardware ended up being replaced with Apple hardware. The only thing that ever replaced Apple hardware was newer Apple hardware, not because the older model had worn out or stopped working, but because newer models came with new features.

I have found two main differences between Apple and non-Apple hardware: stability and features. Stability means I don't worry about it locking up, becoming unresponsive or simply ceasing to work until I unplug it. While I routinely had to make sure to keep a paperclip next to the other routers, the only time I do a full reset on my AirPort equipment is when I move it to a new location and want to start with a clean slate. It's hard to overemphasize this point, especially if you're putting this somewhere difficult to access. So far my favorite installation place for a more reliable AirPort Extreme has been at my mom's house, which has eliminated phone calls from her telling me that she can't get online because "the internet is down."

After stability comes several important features, each of which are important to me and add to the AirPort Extreme's value.

Continue reading Is the AirPort Extreme worth the price?

Is the AirPort Extreme worth the price? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 04 Apr 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

When I first used Safari on my iPhone, I was blown away by how much better it was than any other mobile browser, but since then, Apple hasn't done much with it. A recent Safari update brought significant speed increases, but there are many other limitations that finally led me to try something else, namely iCab Mobile. Is improving your web browsing experience on the iPad or iPhone/iPod touch worth $2?

Before you object to paying for a web browser, let me remind you of a few Apple apps and their alternatives.

On iOS, Apple gave you a Notes app, but many people prefer Simplenote or other text editors or note programs because they offer more features. If you subscribe to MobileMe, you have a 20 GB iDisk, but anyone who has tried Dropbox knows that it works much better. Apple gave you iCal, but BusyCal is a lot better. Apple gave you TextEdit in OS X, but BBEdit and TextMate are much better. You can read RSS feeds in Mail or Safari, but do you?

Likewise, Apple gave us Safari, which is "good," but iCab offers many features that make it "great."

Continue reading iCab Mobile for iOS is like a pro version of Safari

iCab Mobile for iOS is like a pro version of Safari originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 04 Apr 2011 05:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

If you post to Twitter and say the word "iPhone" or "iPad," you are likely to get hit with one of the rash of Twitter spammers who search through Twitter for people who post about those terms and @reply to them with some "deal" (usually offering you a chance to "win" a "free" iPad or iPhone).

I have been trying to remember to not say those words on Twitter, or to spell them differently, such as "iPxd" or "iPhxne," or use "lookalike" characters such as "¡Phone" (that's an inverted "!" instead of an "i"). I keep forgetting, though, and every time I do -- wham! I get more spam.

So I finally decided to let my computer do the thinking for me. I created a new "Group" in TextExpander, and I told it to only expand in Twitterrific (my desktop Twitter app of choice). Then I created two shortcuts: "ipad" and "iphone" and told TextExpander to ignore the case (so if I type "iPhone" or "iphone" it will match both).

Then I created my alternate spellings for each word.

Now I don't have to remember to purposefully misspell them for Twitter (and ruin my muscle memory for typing them properly in other instances), and I can avoid some of the Twitter spammers. I trust my followers are smart enough to know what I mean when I talk about my new iPāÐ!

Note: experienced TextExpander users may note that the color of the shortcuts above indicates a "conflict" for those two shortcuts. That's because I have "ipad" and "iphone" shortcuts in my "stable" group, which auto-capitalizes them correctly even if I don't type the capital "P" myself. However, when TextExpander finds a "conflict" between two identical shortcuts, it uses the first one that it finds, so my Twitterrific group (since it is listed at the top) will override my other shortcuts.

P.S. Happy 5th birthday, Twitter! I hope you fix your spam problem -- and the trending topic bar in your app, and stop treating third-party developers like unwelcome guests despite the fact that they are responsible for much of your success -- soon!

Use TextExpander and Twitterrific to avoid Twitter spam originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 Mar 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I've been using John Gruber's suggestions from Going Flash-Free on Mac OS X, and How to Cheat When You Need It to avoid installing Adobe Flash by using Google Chrome (which includes its own version of Flash) whenever I run into a page that has Flash I want to see.

To make this easier, John suggested turning on the "Develop menu" in Safari's "Advanced" preferences, which includes a sub-menu to "Open Page With" and a sub-sub-menu that shows all of your installed browsers. John suggested using System Preferences to create a keyboard shortcut for "Google Chrome" or "Google Chrome.app" depending on which one you saw in the menu.

Unfortunately, this failed for me quite often. Every time I launched Safari, the keyboard shortcut would not work until I had opened that menu manually using the mouse. I hate using the mouse. After opening the menu, the keyboard shortcut would work until I quit Safari again. That was mildly annoying, but things recently took a turn for the worse.

Here's what the menu looks like for me now:

Notice that the browser listings now include version numbers. This means that a keyboard shortcut would have to include the version number, which means it would break whenever the browser is updated.

I asked a few folks, and it appears this changed in Safari 5.0.4. I haven't been able to find a way to revert to the old behavior, so I started looking for another way.

Continue reading Use AppleScript to open current Safari URL in Google Chrome

Use AppleScript to open current Safari URL in Google Chrome originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 14 Mar 2011 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I recently downloaded an app that I wanted to run without a dock icon. There wasn't a preference to run that way, but I remembered that there was a way to edit a file within each app's "bundle" (.app "files" are actually folders or packages).

Sure enough, a little time on Google brought me to information about adding or changing the "LSUIElement" key in the app's Info.plist file. It also led me to Dockless, which is an app that automatically sets that key for you when you drag the app to Dockless' window.

That seemed much safer than editing the file myself, so I downloaded Dockless, dragged the app to it and restarted the app.

It crashed immediately and every time afterwards.

I'm no math whiz, but I can put two and two together. I emailed the developer, who confirmed my suspicion that editing the app that way had broken code signing, a feature that Apple introduced in 10.5 and which is now an essential part of most current apps, including apps from the Mac App Store. The solution was simple: delete the app and re-download a clean copy from the Mac App Store. (Running Dockless again to "undo" the change was not enough in my experience.)

Just for the sake of completeness, I tried Dock Dodger, another application designed to do the same thing. To the developer's credit, there is a disclaimer on their website that "you may get some strange behavior or find some features inaccessible" after using it. I made a copy of iCal and ran Dock Dodger on the copy. It ran without a dock icon, but it also refused to store my MobileMe password, meaning that my calendars would not sync via MobileMe.

Lesson learned. Being able to coerce apps to run without a dock icon might have been something we could get away with in the past, but it was never a very good idea, and like Lando's deal with Darth Vader, it's getting worse all the time.

Fortunately I've noticed more and more applications that give users a preference setting to turn off the dock icon. If app developers build this into their apps, the feature doesn't break code signing, and the apps will continue to function normally.

So what should you do if you find an app that you want to run "dockless" that doesn't have a preference setting for it? Well, if you want to try one of the above apps (which I do not recommend), be sure to make a copy of the app, and try the changes on the copy. That way, if it doesn't work, you can trash the copy and still have your "clean" original. My recommendation is to contact the developer and ask (nicely) for them to consider adding the feature in a future version. Developers weigh new feature requests based on a number of different things, but user requests are an important part of that decision process. It may not be feasible for all applications, but if you don't ask, they'll never know it was a feature you wanted.

The right and wrong ways to run apps without dock icons originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 13 Mar 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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.

Continue reading Mac 101: Six steps for tracking down hard drive space hogs

Mac 101: Six steps for tracking down hard drive space hogs originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 10 Mar 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

ZDNet spotted a new Apple support document which states that only "Apple retail stores or Apple Authorized Service Providers" can unlock a new MacBook Air (late 2010) or Pro (early 2011) protected by a firmware password. If your firmware password is lost or forgotten, you'll have to take it to the shop to get it cleared.

This is significant news, because techniques for circumventing the security features built into the Extensible Firmware interface (EFI) have circulated on the Internet for some time. Even if you set a firmware password, a skilled attacker could still access your machine and your data.

A firmware password will prevent someone from restarting the machine using Target Disk Mode or booting off a DVD/external drive. It will not prevent someone from opening your computer up, removing the hard drive, and putting the drive into a separate computer or case, but it's an extra layer of protection. [As the security maxim goes, "physical access = full access" -- however a firmware password is frequently used by schools or enterprises to raise the difficulty level for casual hacking. -Ed.]

It's possible that as newer Macs are released, they too will have the enhanced security that Apple has provided to the current MacBook Air and Pro lines. Alternatively, Apple might leave the supercharged lockdown as a feature for the portable machines only (seeing as it would be something of a drag to haul your Mac Pro to the mall for a forgotten firmware password).

If you need to set a firmware password, boot your computer from the installation disk (either a Snow Leopard DVD or that cute little USB drive that ships with the MacBook Air which you probably lost already, didn't you?). After selecting a language, go to the "Utilities" menu, and select "Firmware Password Utility."

With the password enabled, you will have to enter it before booting from any method other than the internal hard drive. You can remove the password by following the same steps and choosing "Remove Password."

Firmware password security improved on new MacBook Air & Pro originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 10 Mar 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.