Mac 911

Speed-up iMovie clips

Christopher Breen — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:38:00 -0800

Here's the way to time-compress a very long video clip.

Bugs & Fixes: Magic Mouse loses its way

Ted Landau — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:05:00 -0800

A pair of irritating symptoms have made Ted Landau's experience with Apple's latest mouse less than magical.

Shifting large media libraries

Christopher Breen — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:56:00 -0800

It happens to lots of us: Large media files choke our startup drive. Here are solutions for sharing the wealth between an internal and external hard drive.

Power and the international Mac

Christopher Breen — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:50:00 -0800

No, you needn't purchase a power converter when you take your Mac traveling.

Bugs & Fixes: Snow Leopard's Spelling Ignore button is ignored

Ted Landau — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:43:00 -0700

After upgrading to Snow Leopard, have you noticed that words continue to be flagged as potentially incorrect even after you've clicked the Ignore button in the Spelling Checker? Ted Landau gets to the root of the problem.

How to provide tech support for your family

Christopher Breen — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:38:00 -0700

When should you as family tech support intervene in a technical issue between your loved one and a tech? Before, during, and after.

Upgrading a MacBook Pro's hard drive

Christopher Breen — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:07:00 -0700

Laptop in one hand, replacement raw drive in the other. No, you needn't reinstall everything when you install the new hard drive.

Bugs & Fixes: Font duplicate misadventures

Ted Landau — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:40:00 -0700

After upgrading to Snow Leopard, Ted Landau was surprised to find 16 duplicate font warnings. And it took some effort to resolve the matter.

Caching iPod touch driving directions

Christopher Breen — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:45:00 -0700

You say your iPod touch isn't much good for providing directions while on the road? With a little planning it can be a better navigator.

Move Finder items more efficiently

Christopher Breen — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:22:00 -0700

There must be easier ways to move items from place to place on your Mac. I provide a few and then solicit your ideas.

Bugs & Fixes: Solving Safari cookie problems

Ted Landau — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:36:00 -0700

Sometimes, solving a cookie-related problem requires more than just deleting cookies from Safari, as Ted Landau details in this week's Bugs & Fixes column.

Printing mailing labels

Christopher Breen — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:19:00 -0700

No need to search for a special tool to print address labels. The tool is built into OS X.

Filtering foreign e-mail

Christopher Breen — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:36:00 -0700

Looking for an easy way to filter e-mail that contains foreign character sets? Here's one suggestion, but the job may require sterner measures.

Bugs & Fixes: When PDFs won't load in Safari

Ted Landau — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 05:40:00 -0700

Snow Leopard has been out for more than a month, but Ted Landau keeps stumbling across compatibility problems. The latest? It involves trying to view a PDF document, accessed as a Web link in Safari.

Resetting Safari

Christopher Breen — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:14:00 -0700

I finally bring the big guns to bear on an annoying Safari/Google problem.

Recovering an erased hard drive

Christopher Breen — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 14:56:00 -0700

So, you erased your hard drive. Here's one recommendation for a tool to use to recover it.

Bugs & Fixes: Font problems in Snow Leopard

Ted Landau — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:00:00 -0700

Did the spacing between characters of certain fonts in some of your documents change after you upgraded to Snow Leopard? If so, you're not alone.

Solutions for synchronizing folders

Christopher Breen — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:56:00 -0700

Student Ross Wehner would like to synchronize his school and home homework folder. Here are some suggestions.

Combining PDF pages in Snow Leopard

Christopher Breen — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:08:00 -0700

Snow Leopard has changed the way you combine PDF documents in Preview. It works like this.

Searching notes in Calendar and Contact apps

Christopher Breen — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:32:00 -0700

You say you want to search the Notes field of the iPhone's Calendar and Contacts apps? Just how eager are you to jailbreak your phone?

Easily adding e-mail addresses

Christopher Breen — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:27:00 -0700

Mail won't allow you to quickly add multiple recipients from selected e-mail messages but a third-party tool will.

Bugs & Fixes: Too many iPhone notes in Mail?

Ted Landau — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:36:00 -0700

The notes syncing feature introduced in the iPhone 3.0 update could create duplicate copies of Notes in the inbox listings for each of your mail accounts. Ted Landau has a fix.

Bugs & Fixes: Snow Leopard grab bag

Ted Landau — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:11:00 -0700

Late last week, Apple released the 10.6.1 update to Snow Leopard. Ted Landau looks at some of the fixes in that update as well as some other outstanding Snow Leopard issues.

Bugs & Fixes: iTunes 9 and Safari mix it up

Ted Landau — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 05:10:00 -0700

Apple rolled out a new version of iTunes this week, and with it have come a pair of problems -- one related to Safari and the other involving the new Genius Mixes feature.

Get an Ethernet-networked printer working in Snow Leopard

Ted Landau — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 05:22:00 -0700

After upgrading to Snow Leopard, Ted Landau's trusty old HP LaserJet 4000N no longer responded to Print requests from his Mac. Here's how he tackled the problem. Plus: a bonus look at the low ink level warning in OS X 10.6.

Resurrecting the MacBook's number pad

Christopher Breen — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 10:58:00 -0700

With the unibody MacBooks Apple removed the ability for you to use the keyboard as a number pad. Here's how to restore that ability.

Un-minimize windows via keyboard command

Christopher Breen — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 10:14:00 -0700

You have a keyboard command for minimizing windows yet no similar command for un-minimizing them. Here are a couple of solutions.

Fixing permissions in Leopards old and new

Ted Landau — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 10:00:00 -0700

Ted Landau explores the art of fixing permissions in Leopard, and finds out that Snow Leopard appears to have dramatically improved the process.

Dealing with a full hard drive

Christopher Breen — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 11:10:00 -0700

It's not always convenient or possible to plunk a more capacious drive into your Mac. Here are a few facts and hints about full hard drives.

Cure for the non-working number pad

Christopher Breen — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:39:00 -0700

You say your keyboard's number pad is non-functional? Here's the cure.

Bugs and Fixes: MacBook Pro oddities

Ted Landau — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 06:30:00 -0700

Ted Landau looks at two strange quirks in the current line of MacBook Pro models.

Streaming large movies

Christopher Breen — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:16:00 -0700

No, if you can help it, you don't want to take a nearly 2GB movie and plunk it into a MobileMe Gallery. Here's how to help it.

Eliminating a Word macro virus

Christopher Breen — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:18:00 -0700

Rare though they are these days, Word macro viruses are still around. Here are the steps for dealing with them.

Bugs & Fixes: iPhone app icon mix-up

Ted Landau — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 07:24:00 -0700

Do you tap one icon on your iPhone's home screen only to have another app launch? Ted Landau identifies the problem, but a definitive fix is hard to come by until Apple steps in.

Disabling Safari 4's image cache

Christopher Breen — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:14:00 -0700

A reader finds a folder full of Safari preview images that he'd like no part in. Here's how to keep from accumulating them.