Tips and Tricks

With just three more weeks to go until San Francisco's Moscone Center opens its doors for Macworld Expo 2009, it is about time to start preparing your visit to the year's most important Mac event. This handful of resources is useful for planning your trip, but they may also come in handy in case you haven't made up your mind about attending yet.

Mac The Ripper is a free DVD ripper (extractor) for Mac OS X. It can extract commercial DVD movies to your hard drive, minus all the copy protections and region controls put in place by DVD publishers.

Mac The Ripper removes CSS encryption, Macrovision protection, and sets the disc's region code to '0' for region-free by default, and is capable of removing RCE region protection as well, making an unrestricted copy of any DVD movie you own. It doesn't rely on the DVD drive to get the CSS decryption keys, so that means that you do not need to play the DVD with DVD Player in order to rip it to your hard drive unprotected

MacThe Ripper is also capable of removing UOPs, or User Operation Prohibitions, which are the settings that prevent you from skipping or fast-forwarding certain parts of DVDs, such as FBI warnings, previews, logos, intros, etc.

Although we’ve covered the process of recovering your content from your iPod extensively in our tutorial on Copying Content from your iPod to your Computer, the reality is that this remains a somewhat cumbersome and imperfect recovery process. Further, if you have not been syncing your entire library to your iPod, then you’re not going to get all of your content back, since of course you can’t recover what isn’t there.

Of course, if your music library consists of content ripped from your own CDs, you can always go back to those as a source, but this will not only be a time-consuming process of re-importing all of your content, but you will also have lost any metadata about those tracks such as ratings, play counts, and playlist entries.

As for content you may have purchased from the iTunes Store? For that you’d pretty much be relying on Apple’s good graces to allow you to re-download it—an exception that they will sometimes make, but definitely not part of their normal policy. Apple tells you flat out the first time you use the iTunes Store that you are responsible to back up your iTunes purchases yourself.

The good news is that this process is not as onerous as it may seem, and in fact iTunes itself has provided tools in recent versions to make things even easier for many users with simple backup needs.

If you know the right tricks, you can maximise the lifespan and battery life of you MacBook or MacBook Pro. The way you charge the battery, the conditions is which you use and store your laptop and the way you have your energy saver preferences set all have an effect on how long your battery will last and how well if performs.

Over time, your battery holds less and less charge, meaning your laptop doesn't last as long between charges. Apple claims that their batteries are designed to retain 80% of their original capacity after 300 cycles.

If your battery is in good condition or is starting to show signs of aging, you will want to make sure you get the most out of it before you have to replace it. Here are a few tips to prolong the lifespan and battery life of your battery.

Traveling can be an exciting adventure, especially if that adventure takes you to a different country. Sure, there will be surprises along the way, but you can help ensure they are all good with a little extra planning ahead, especially if you plan on taking any of your tech gear with you.

If you are planning a trip that takes you over seas -- or like everyone that's packing for the upcoming MacMania cruise, on the seas -- you'll need to account for safely transporting your Mac, iPod and iPhone, and you'll also need to plan for your electrical needs in the air, on the ground, and on the sea.

Dear iPhone Users:

Change your iPhone root password. If you have jailbroken your iPhone, your default root password is “alpine.” This puts you at a distinct security disadvantage when connected to open networks as it allows the nefarious to browse your entire iPhone with impunity.

To change your password, first runt his perl command:

openssl passwd -crypt -salt /s [password]

Where [password] is your new password. The script will return a number of random characters followed by “.io” The characters before “.io” is your encrypted password.

The edit the file /etc/master.passwd line that gives the information for root on the iPhone. This means you need to ssh into your iPhone and run vi.

Peachpit Press has posted a group of video tutorials for Lightroom 2 by Peachpit authors Martin Evening, Matt Kloskowski, Jerry Courvoisier, Kevin Ames, and Chris Orwig. Here's a sample of what you can learn:

Saving Time Working in Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS4 By Martin Evening
Easy Integration Between Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS4 By Jerry Courvoisier
Local Correction in Lightroom 2 By Jerry Courvoisier
Working Efficiently with Presets in Lightroom 2 By Martin Evening
Using the Volume Browser in Lightroom 2 By Matt Kloskowski
Crop Adjustment Brush in Lightroom 2 By Chris Orwig

One great way to go green is to practice conservation, or as I like to call it, "avoidance." In other words, avoid using gas by missing traffic, avoid using excess electricity by turning your lights off remotely, avoid waste by buying used goods. One little tool has a growing ability to help you ditch the need for the little-bit-mores that we want to cut out: the iPhone.

While other phones are starting to adopt apps and web-based programs as well, the iPhone has a seriously wide selection of apps a user can download. And with mobile service technology, there are a few energy saving solutions that link up with your phone and alert you on how and when to cut back on energy use.

We’ve scoured the apps store and internet for the coolest green options and programs that will help save gas, energy, time and money in four main areas of life.

Later this week, I’m off for a trip to Japan. I never go anywhere without my iPhone anymore. Japan will be no exception. But I will be taking the phone with some trepidation. Knowing that international charges can be exorbitant, I’ve spent a good deal of time determining what, if anything, I could do to keep costs to a minimum. To save you from having to do the same legwork, here’s what I learned.

The cheapest thing you can do, by far, is leave your phone at home. Or treat it as if it were an iPod touch, never connecting to any network except a Wi-Fi one (Wi-Fi usage remains free except for any local charge). Otherwise, using an iPhone in most foreign countries will likely cost you somewhere between a hefty sum and your entire life savings. With some planning and prudence, however, you can make sure your costs stay down near the hefty sum end.

Mac OS X, as it ships or gets installed from an Apple DVD, is a mighty impressive operating system, but different people use it in different ways.

While many people will never even think about modifying the behaviour of their systems, there are many more who will want to do exactly that. If this is you, you'll be interested to learn that there are a large number of excellent tools for tweaking OS X and altering the way it works, the majority of which operate non- destructively.

There are also some great monitoring and system maintenance tools available that go way beyond what Apple gives you as standard, and these can help you on your way to keeping a clean and healthy operating system that lasts a long time. Here are some of the best.

Back in early August, the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced new rules covering “checkpoint friendly” laptop bags. The goal of these regulations is to increase the speed and efficiency of airport security checkpoints by allowing passengers to keep their laptop computers in their bags during X-ray screening. However, there’s quite a bit of confusion about what, exactly, constitutes a checkpoint-friendly bag and the specific rules for using one.

Not listed in the guidelines, but mentioned on the TSA Web site under the topic of Industry Process and Guidelines, are warnings against thick bag dividers and thick emblems or seals on the laptop-only section. These elements can prevent security-checkpoint X-rays from obtaining a clear image of your laptop.

Vendors are meeting the requirements in a couple ways.

From Gizmodo
There's a huge security problem in the latest iPhone 2.0.2: if you have your JesusPhone password protected, using a very simple trick gives anyone full access to your cellphone private information in Mail, SMS, Contacts, and even Safari. The two-step trick is even simpler to the one used in the past to gain access to the phone to install unlocking cards or jailbreak. Fortunately, there's a way to avoid this obvious security breach until Apple fixes it.

Click here to read more "iPhone Security Flaw puts All Private Information at Risk"

From PCMag
As the cliché goes, with great power comes great responsibility. Round 2 of the iPhone revolution brought fans a 3G-capable model with a built-in GPS radio—not to mention plenty of software enhancements that work on both the new model and the original version.

Of course, that means there's more to learn. But that's where we come in. We assume you already know how to make calls, surf the Web, synchronize your music and photos, and generally have a good time—but you want to learn some real shortcuts. If that's the case, here's a list of our top tips and tricks for iPhone 2.0, geared toward more advanced users. Want to become a real iPhone power user? Read on.

Click here to read more "iPhone 3G Tips and Tricks"

From Apple
This article explains how to replace an original iPhone with an iPhone 3G using the same carrier. If you follow these steps to backup your original iPhone first, and then restore the backup to your iPhone 3G, your saved SMS messages, email accounts, photos, notes, and other personal settings will be present on your iPhone 3G.

Click here to read more "How to replace an Original iPhone with an iPhone 3G"

From Take Control

Info about nearly 100 Mac backup apps and a Retrospect primer!

If you want to compare features in Mac backup apps or get help with Retrospect, you are in the right place. The content here is free to all, but it is associated with a commerical ebook, written by Joe Kissell and published by TidBITS Publishing Inc. The ebook helps you figure out your best strategy for making backups in Tiger and Leopard, and then it covers all the details of set up, testing, maintenance, and restoration.

Click here to read more "Take Control of Mac OS X Backups"

From Macworld

You’ve got questions about Apple’s forthcoming iPhone 3G and MobileMe - Macworld has answers!

Click here to read more "iPhone 3G: What you need to Know"

Click here to read more "MobileMe: What you need to Know"

From Reality Distortion
Everyone loves a nice screen saver - they give you something to stare at when you’re bored, and an eye-popping screen saver is a great way to impress your friends and colleagues when they amble past your Mac!

Here, in no particular order, are 10 free Mac screen savers that I love. Installation hints are at the end, if you need them.

From Macworld
By now, you sure know that — thanks to Intel chips in Macs and software such as Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion, you can run Windows software on your Mac.

But you may not know the answers to a bunch of other related questions: Why would you want to put Windows on your Mac in the first place? Which Windows programs are compelling and unique enough to justify the hassle of putting Windows on your Mac? Can you really incorporate those programs smoothly into your Mac workflow, or will they always feel clunky? In other words, while putting Windows on your Mac might sound great in theory, how does it all work out in reality?

For some answers to those questions, we offer this series.

Click here to read more "Best of Both Worlds: OS X and Windows"

From Macworld

In this article, we’ll focus on techniques that will strengthen your workflow skills and simultaneously reveal some of the new features in Lightroom 1.1. To get the most out of Lightroom 1.1, our approach will diverge from the traditional list of new features. Instead, we’ll provide a few highlights of how new features can be integrated into an effective photographic workflow.

Click here to read more "Enhanced Workflow in Lightroom 1.1"

From Macworld
As far as digital technology has come, there’s still one thing that digital cameras won’t do: give you perfect color every time. In fact, if they gave us perfect color 50 percent of the time, that would be incredible. But unfortunately, every digital camera sneaks some kind of color cast into your images. Here’s how to get your color in line.

Click here to read more "Color Correcting Digital Camera Images"

From Computerworld
About five months ago, Macintosh lovers finally got their hands on Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard,” which boasts more than 300 new features spread across its interface and underpinnings. Some of those features are well-known — the Dock’s “stacks” function, Spaces, Time Machine and Screen Sharing, to name some of those most talked about by users and columnists alike.

But many others are buried just beneath the surface, unknown or ignored by users even though they’ve had Leopard installed for months. These “hidden” features may be things you never heard of or noticed, or even used without realizing their presence or scope—but they’re too good to miss.

Click here to read more "Top 25 Overlooked and Underrated Features in Leopard"

From Macworld

Lightroom is simpler to use than Photoshop, says Martin Evening, and without compromising the quality of color processing in any way. In this article, he points out some special Lightroom features for smarter editing of digital images.

Click here to read more "Smarter Image Editing in Lightroom"

From Instructables.com
This tutorial will show you how to use your iPod to mark songs for automatic deletion so you won't have to remember to do it later. It's the next best thing to having a "delete" button on your iPod. And don't worry this won't delete songs from iTunes, just from your iPod.

Now when you hear a song on your iPod you don't like anymore, you won't have to remember to delete it when you get back to your computer.

Click here to read more "Automatically remove Unwanted Songs from Your iPod"

From Macworld
If you have more than one Mac but don’t want to use a separate hard drive to back up each one, Time Machine can help. Time Machine works in the background, creating backups of files on an external hard drive whenever you modify your system.

You can use a single drive to back up multiple computers with Time Machine in any of the follow three ways.

Click here to read more "Back up Multiple Computers with Time Machine"

From Macworld
As the maintainer of the Mobile Mac Weblog, one of the things I get to do is upgrade mobile hardware. A while back I showed you how to upgrade the hard drive in a Mac Book Pro, or even install a second hard drive. In this Macworld video, I demonstrate the process of upgrading an older MacBook Pro’s 802.11g wireless card to a new, faster 802.11n version. I also cover the kind of performance gains such an upgrade will bring you.

Click here to read more "Upgrade Your Wireless Card"

From PhotoJoJo

Boy, are we excited. We’ve spent every waking moment these last months cooped up in the Photojojo Labs, working tirelessly on what can only be our greatest experiment ever. We’ve finally done it. We’ve found the key to…

Time Travel.

Well, time-lapse photography. Which is basically the same thing.

So go ahead, read our guide on the ins and outs of time-lapse and start churning out your very own time-lapse videos from your photos.

Click here to read more "The Ultimate Guide to Time-Lapse Photography"

From iLounge
It was one of Apple’s worst decisions of 2007: even if you owned a song and wanted to use it as an iPhone ringtone, you couldn’t. Instead, the only custom ringtones you could play were ones sold at a ridiculous price through iTunes, or ones that required hacks and third-party applications to create. Today, Apple has fixed its prior bad call, releasing version 4.1.1 of the iLife ‘08 application GarageBand, an update that now lets you create your own custom iPhone ringtones. Now that Apple has released both GarageBand ‘08 and iTunes 7.5, which stopped trying to block ringtones created by third-party applications, iPhone ringtone creation has never been so easy. Our ten step guide walks you through the process.

Click here to read more "10 Step Guide to iPhone Custom Ringtones in GarageBand ‘08"

From iPhone Central

Google’s torrid love affair with the iPhone continues as the big G rolls out a new iPhone-optimized interface for its online photo-sharing site, Picasa. According to Joe Walnes, a software engineer with Google’s mobile division, the decision to do an iPhone-specific version of Picasa came about where all good ideas do: the pub.

The interface is smooth and easy to use on the iPhone and lets you quickly view your pictures or search for images in the community at large. It even has a slideshow mode, and of course you can flip your images into landscape just by rotating the phone. To access the new interface, head over to Picasa on your iPhone, or by navigating to Google’s revamped homepage and selecting “More” from the toolbar at the top.

Click here to read more "Picasa for iPhone makes a Pretty Picture"

From Computerworld
Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday now behind us, the holiday shopping season is in full swing. Last month, we offered our Holiday Gift Guide to help you sort through this year's gadgets and techie toys.

But shopping for Mac users and Apple fans can sometimes be a challenge -- especially if you want to get something other than the obvious choices, or if you're not as big an Apple fan as the person you're shopping for. With that in mind, here are 10 great gift ideas for the Mac user on your list.

Click here to read more "Mac Gift Guide 2007"

From Bagelturf
I've put together what I think is a comprehensive list of ways to speed up Aperture. Some are quick, some are cheap, some are neither.

Click here to read more "32 Ways To Speed Up Aperture"