Yearly Archives: 2011

I have replaced the hard drive that came in my MacBook drive with a larger one. If I secure erase the old drive in Disk Utility, is it safe to sell? —– John ... (1 Comment)

Apple issued updates to firmware for MacBook Airs, MacBook Pros and the Mac mini this week. Firmware is a term used to describe small applications and data stored on chips in a Mac, as opposed to hard drives or memory. Firmware that comes with a Mac can be updated by Apple to fix bugs and add features. See http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1471.
These new updates include improvements to how the new Thunderbolt port can be used with external displays, as well as in target disk mode — a way to access your Mac as a hard drive from another Mac with the Thunderbolt connector.
In addition, the updates provide more support for recovery in case of a hard drive failure. Newer Macs with Lion can recover and even re-install Lion with an Internet connection thanks to a special recovery partition and software in firmware. This way Lion can be restored without needing an optical drive or other storage device with a Lion installer. See http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718 for details.

While having the Dashboard as a whole “space” in Lion is useful for those that use Dashboard a lot, you can also return to using these widgets over overlays to your desktop like they were previously. Go to Mission Control in System Preferences and turn off “Show Dashboard as a Space.” Now you can still use your shortcut key or the Dashboard Dock icon to access those widgets, but they will just appear on top of your existing screen items.

Yet another new game idea made possible by the iOS touch interface. In Continuity 2: The Continuation, you not only get a very intuitive and interesting way to move a character around the screen by swiping, but you also get a new game concept. You can move the character, sure, but you can also move the environment. You zoom out and slide sections of each level around. Bizarre, fun and addictive.

When using Preview, if you right click on the dock Icon (while Preview is running), it will show you a list of files that were most recently opened, even if the files are not displayed anymore, or from previous Preview sessions. Is there a way to remove these “recently ... (1 Comment)

“I don’t feel I’m communicating with my wife as much anymore.”
“Are you two drifting apart?”
“Yes. I’m still on Facebook and she’s moved to Google+.”

I have an event on my iPhone 3g which I can not deleat. The event does not appear on my mobile me calendar or my iMac calendar. Nor is the option available on my iPhone, when I go into the the event to try and edit the event.There is no edit option there. When I uncheck my at ... (5 Comments)

I want to buy a Mac mini to work as HTPC. I don’t play games, but I would like it to handle the most demanding graphics tasks, including 3D blu-ray etc. What is the cheapest configuration to do this? The variables are: Intel vs AMD grephics, Dual core vs Quad ... (3 Comments)

In my lounge room I have a number of wired Ethernet devices such as PVR, AV Receiver, blu-ray etc. Currently I am using a ethernet cable to connect my office router to my lounge room switch, and then to the individual wired devices. The cable is long and messy, so I am looking ... (1 Comment)

Gary, I have a situation where I can’t open a document sent to me by email. It shows me a window with a PDFKit.Net and says I need Adobe Acrobat Reader to see the file. Up to now, I have been able to use Preview. Is there any reason I should NOT download the Adobe ... (8 Comments)

Gary, I just upgraded to Lion and all went well. My Time Machine (using a Time Capsule wirelessly) has started a backup. I am assuming it will take while. Is this similar to the first backup when I set up the Time Machine (many hours)? For your info, I used the USB from Apple ... (1 Comment)

I upgraded my Ram today and after opening my MBP I was amazed at the amount of dust inside. My MBP is 2yrs old and this was the first time I opened the main compartment. The Mother board, Fans etc. are covered with balls of dust. I can’t afford to bring it to a Pro, some ... (2 Comments)

Fast user switching allows two people to be logged in and take turns using a computer without having to log-off. However, I believe by some clever use of VNC and fast user switching an iMac can be set up to have two users logged in and SIMULTANEOUSLY use the computer without ... (1 Comment)

After upgrade to Lion I find I cannot play online bridge – Okbridge said the fault was with Lion and I should ask Apple to change their code. This seems unlikely. Help?!! —– Julia Beatty ... (1 Comment)

Until I downloaded Lion, I was able to use an older version of Word. I actually had purchased the newest upgrade but had not had the time to install it. After the Lion install, I discovered that Lion does not recognize the older version. And I was not able to use the upgrade ... (3 Comments)

What is the best way (or settings) to import the very many HDV tapes I have into my mac? It is HD Video, so I want to preserve the quality as much as possible. —– Andres ... (3 Comments)

Before I installed Lion I could send pictures from iPhoto with Mail. Now I can still send mail, but not with added pictures from iPhoto. Anyone tell me how to do it? I get the following message: “Mail got error: Can’t make {} into type rich text.” ... (11 Comments)

QR Codes are barcode-like boxes of dots that you can find in magazines, posters, signs and business cards. They usually represent web page addresses. You can use free apps on your iPhone to easily scan these codes and see where they lead. You can also make your own QR Codes using free web services.

Over time, I have accumulated quite a few menu items that reside on the right side of my MacBook Pro’s menu bar. However, when I start up certain apps that have quite a few menu items of their own, such as iTunes, some of these items extend to the right far enough to ... (1 Comment)

I have been installing photos to my iphone and i get a message “some of your photos including the photo xxxxx.jpg were not copied to the iphone because they cannot be displayed on your iphone” Has anyone got this message, and is there a way to fix the photos so that ... (4 Comments)