I'm starting to think there is some sort of bad luck attached to my iTunes Store account, as tonight I experienced the third iTunes Store song that completely locked up an iPod - only this time it was my iPhone. While listening to 'Again with the Subtleties' from the Yppah album You Are Beautiful At All Times (US iTunes link) in my iPhone's iPod app, the phone completely locked up at the end of the track with an almost-faded out display. What was worse, the iPhone became completely unresponsive - the display wouldn't accept any of my taps, and even the external buttons were ignored. Momentarily wishing I could simply yank the battery to cut the power and reset the phone, I realized Apple must have some sort of a contingency in place for lock-ups like these.

Fortunately, I was right: The iPhone troubleshooting section of Apple's main iPhone support site contains a walkthrough for situations like this, complete with instructions on how to restart the phone, force quit a frozen app or reset the phone in cases like mine where it has completely locked up. Here are these steps in a nutshell:

• Restart your iPhone: Most people probably already know how to do this, but just in case, you can simply hold the sleep/wake button on the top for a few seconds to bring up a red slider at the top of the display which allows you to power off the phone.
• Quit a frozen iPhone app: I know it's a crazy thought, but it is entirely possible that Apple's wondrous iPhone apps can lock up from time to time. In this case, simply hold the Home button when in the app for about 6 seconds to kill the app. You should be able to jump back into the app without restarting the phone itself.
• Reset your iPhone: Note that this is not Restoring your iPhone; that's the button in iTunes that wipes the iPhone and all your information on it. Resetting an iPhone is nothing more than a hard reset or a forced reboot - you're simply cutting the power and making it reboot. To do this, hold the sleep/wake button and Home buttons simultaneously for a few seconds; the display will quickly wipe itself and you should see the black background and white Apple logo, signifying a reset well done.

Fortunately, that reset fixed my problem and I'm jamming again with my iPhone as I write this. Still, you can be sure that I'll ping iTunes support to find out what's going on with these files, as this is the third one I've downloaded from the iTS that's caused an iPod to stop dead in its tracks. Anyone else experience something like this? You know where to sound off.

Well this doesn't sound like any fun: enough Intel Macs running 10.4.8 must be having a problem connecting wirelessly to some 3rd party routers that Apple had to publish a support doc on the topic. As icing on the cake, Apple's solution isn't a pretty one either. If your Intel Mac is having this problem, here's Apple's solution: restart the router. If that doesn't fix the problem, Apple then recommends calling the router's manufacturer to spend 45 minutes on hold, getting tossed around between operators who probably dish out the same troubleshooting technique, just like the books taught 'em.

Not exactly the most effective solution I've ever heard to a problem like this, but I guess one must take what one can get - at least until one can download Mac OS X 10.4.9.

We here at TUAW are suckers for productive shortcuts, and since yesterday's System Preferences tip was such a hit, I thought I'd post a few shortcuts to speed up the Sleep, Restart and Shut Down commands. There's actually quite a few ways to accomplish these tasks, so I'll try to mention all the methods I've heard of.

The first: hold the option key while selecting Restart or Shut Down from the Apple Menu to bypass the 'Are You Sure?' dialog, and cut right to the chase. You even get visual feedback in the Apple Menu; click the menu, then press the option key to see the trailing dots disappear from those two commands (as far as I know, this is a typical UI feedback element used throughout the OS; any commands - at least in Cocoa apps - that have keyboard modifiers will change their appearance in the menu if you press the modifier before choosing the option).

The second method is my personal favorite: 100% keyboard shortcuts. Here's a list:

• Sleep = opt + cmd + eject
• Restart = ctrl + cmd + eject
• Shut Down = ctrl + opt + cmd + eject

The third method, involving the power key, can still be counted as a keyboard shortcut, but since I almost never touch the power key (I Sleep my Macs about 99% of the time via my aforementioned favorite method), I don't really consider it part of my typical keystroke regimen. For you power key lovers out there, you can press your Mac's power key, and at the resulting 'Are you sure?' dialog that contains four buttons (Restart, Sleep, Cancel and Shut Down), you can press the first letters of a couple of these actions. Specifically, 'r' for Restart, 's' for Sleep and Enter for Shut Down. 'C' for Cancel doesn't seem to work, but Esc should get you out of the dialog if you need to keep computing.

Here's hoping you don't have a Homer Simpson-like brain, where each new shortcut you learn knocks out an old one. Feel free to chime in with your thoughts on these shortcuts, and enjoy one more trick for working with your Mac just a little bit faster.

Yet more apps that have made my "why doesn't OS X do this natively?" list are Mac Shutdown X and Mac Restart X. The concept of Mac Shutdown X is simple: shut down a Mac automatically based on various kinds of events, such as a download finishing or a file disappearing. While the list of usable events is slim at the moment, the developers state on their product site that they're very open to suggestions. Mac Shutdown X can shut down on a schedule, just like OS X's Energy Preference Pane, but you can also use a calendar and clock to specify a specific date and time in the future for shutting down. Conversely, Mac Restart X does exactly what you might think: it allows you to set a schedule or specify a date (but not events - yet) for automatically restarting your Mac.

While I'm sure some people could find these separate apps handy in various ways, the fact that they sell for $10 each makes me think they should simply be combined into one utility for one price. Regardless, it's a good niche to have filled by a simple little to-the-point app.

[via MacNN]