SweetMacTips

month

February 2010

92 posts

iTunes and an external drive

You just recently got a question essentially about partially hosting an itunes library on an external drive, and your answer was that it is not possible. Actually, it is very possible. I do that very thing with all of my movies. What you do is you locate the original files in the finder, and delete them out of the library (not the original folder, obviously). Then you move them and organize them...

AppleCare, should you buy it?

So, you’re going to buy a new Mac. Should you buy AppleCare? In a word? Yes. AppleCare, for those who don’t know, is Apple’s extended warranty that is offered on many of their products. They’re offered on iPhones and iPods too. It’s a little more of a grey area on if you should buy it for an iPhone or iPod. But my feeling is that on a Mac computer, absolutely you...

videogameheart asked: Hey! I have an iTunes-specific question. I have about 50+ audiobooks & they take up a ridiculous amount of room on my hard drive. I have a giant external hard drive but I do not want to move my music on to it, only my audiobooks. I use the "Consolidate" feature just about every day, to move all of my recently added music that is not in the iTunes folder to the iTunes folder.. so...

etiswhatuc asked: Hi I had asked previously how to get songs back from my Itouch to my Mac and you recommended me Senuti, I was just wondering if this would delete the applications I currently have on my itouch? Or would it leave them the way they are? Thanks !

jaysonng asked: I have a macbook pro ti 2.16ghz 2gb ram. 320gb but with my iphoto library, my hd space is almost always down between 1 - 5gb.
My question is how do i speed up my computer because it seems to me that my apps hang a lot. Especially if i run photoshop, mail, firefox and vlc together. My vlc turns choppy (audio is there but video is stuck). It seems like im running out of memory. Am i right?

heyemoking asked: Just a quick question I'm running a standard Mac Book on Leopard what is your advise on upgrading to Snow Leopard? Are there any performance issues etc? I mean on Windows it makes a big load of difference If you upgrade it usually has to be one Windows OS for once PC or else it just runs sluggish. I'm hoping Mac is different and won't have any trouble!

I have 2GB Ram...

Anonymous asked: It's come to the point where if I move just slightly, the external usb hard drive I have connected to my Macbook Pro disconnects. Are loose usb ports covered under AppleCare?

Power power everywhere, and not a bit to drink

So just how the heck do you get the most out of your Mac’s battery life? I’ve written before about keeping your battery healthy, now let’s find out how to actually get the most battery while you’re using your Mac. There are some real power drainers in a portable computer. First, anything with a moving part. That goes for things like your hard drive and your optical drive....

vneckandacardigan asked: Another question!

So I fully recharged my MacBook Pro and was only on Tumblr. Within 10 seconds the battery indicator said it has 4:07 left and dropped down to 3:34. Is there a reason the time drops so quickly at first when you start using the laptop once it is done charging and why it never really lasts for 8 hours? I try and keep it on maximum power saving settings but am sort...

botaz-deactivated20110801 asked: Thank you for your help with my Setup Assistant question. Now I was wondering is there any way to partition a drive without erasing all the data? I have an external drive formatted in MS-DOS and I wanted to make a small Mac partition in it.

moon-and-snow asked: Hi,
I uploaded a couple pictures today into iPhoto and deleted them off my camera. Now, the thumbnails are showing up in the library, but the pictures themselves do not when i double click (well, they show up for half a second, then disappear). When I searched for the files, they came up, but as being "zero kb." Is there any way to restore these pictures?

iamsteve-deactivated20120326 asked: Going along with the "leaving your Mac on overnight" theme, I have a related question. I am running Leopard on my iMac. (Yeah, I know I should upgrade for only 30 bucks but just haven't had time to get around to it yet, but I digress.). I have set my Mac to go to sleep after 3 hours, and as such my Mac sleeps for most of the night. I have heard from various sources that...

Sweet App Sunday - Onyx

Today’s part two of SweetAppSunday goes to a utility called Onyx. It’s a freebie and can be had here. Be mindful that there are separate versions for each version of Mac OS X. Make sure you get the right one. So just what does it do? It’s a combination of maintenance and tweaking. One of the maintenance tasks that it handles is clearing caches, like our prior SweetAppSunday app...

davidfincher-archive asked: I barely ever turn off my Macbook pro overnight. Is that a problem, and should I be turning it off periodically?

SweetAppSunday at your fingertips

In preparation for today’s SweetAppSunday, I’ve added a new “features” section to the site’s sidebar. Anything that I tag “sweetappsunday” is now available by clicking the SwtAppSndy button on the sidebar. When I figure out how to make the button bigger, I’ll add the vowels back in ;)

vneckandacardigan asked: How many times a week should I turn off my MacBook Pro overnight? I hear a lot of conflicting things -- never turn it off unless something is off on your computer, turn it off one night a week, etc.

life-as-fast-as-it-goes-deactiv asked: Hey There! i am looking at Getting a new Mac (MacBook Pro) and they all seam to get really hot! but im wondering and want your thoughts on it, which MacBook Pros stay cooler? the 1st Gens on 2nd Gens (current ones)?

fleamarketpaperbag asked: Hi, have you heard of Spring Cleaning 10 for mac? My university's having this deal right now and its description looks promising. I was just wondering if it is of any good really. Thanks!

joepants-deactivated20100526-de asked: i have a 2 year old mac book pro, it wont play new dvd's but it'll play old ones. why is that? after a while, it'll finally play the new dvd, but i have to keep trying. I just insert it ad it ejects it, until it finally reads the DVD.

botaz-deactivated20110801 asked: Hi, I want to put my MacBook on eBay and I was wondering if there is any way to do a clean install of Snow Leopard without it restarting after its done (just shutting down) so that the Welcome video and Setup Assistant dont run until it is turned on again?

EveryMac is the place I go to find out specifications on well, every Mac. They keep a list of all Macs and just about every possible spec on them. Everything from how much RAM can a machine handle to what OS originally shipped on it. They even update the approximate retail price of each model twice a year. It’s well worth checking out.

Anonymous asked: howdy!
i'm trying to get the most from my PB G4 15" ('05), due to the fact that i'm too poor to buy a Macbook right now.

The official max for RAM is 2GB... have you heard of this machine going rogue and handling more? i crunch big graphic/photo files in Graphic COnverter... ANy other tips for this machine?
thanks in advance!

youngradiolarians asked: Some of my icons are now the blank generic application icons because I changed them in CandyBar and then deleted CandyBar and all its associated files for a while to free up space. I tried emailing Panic, but they were no help. Any ideas? Or maybe somewhere where I can get replacement icons for these applications? They're things like PhotoBooth and System Prefs...
Thanks!

ibelieveihadahat asked: I'm having trouble connecting devices over my wifi network. Specifically I want to control my Mac with a VNC client on my iPod touch, as well as use Apple's own remote app. I am able to create a new network from my mac and connect the 2 devices that way, so clearly the fault does not lie with either of them. Of course though I lose internet functionality not being connected to my router...

Anonymous asked: Sometimes icons for files just change size. I have no idea why and it happens at random. This was my desktop a few days ago:

http://i49.tinypic.com/2mzj4k.jpg

I drew around the guilty files to make their tiny size easier to see. This particular day it had happened to all my .zip files, some .jpegs and my HDD. When I went into 'View options' and changed the...

thatbluething asked: can I install a anti-virus for my Mac pro? I only start using a mac lately.

A statement about Torrents (and illegality in...

I’ve gotten a few comments about my position on torrents and I’d like to clear something up and then that’ll be the end of it. I’m not necessarily against torrents. The technology itself is brilliant. What I will not do is assist in someone’s wish to break the law. It can leave me personally and financially liable. Now, that doesn’t mean that I agree with the...

Anonymous asked: I'd just like to point out that using uTorrent isn't necessarily illegal. Legal torrents do exist; it's how the platform continues to operate without being shut down completely.

i wanted to know what you suggest I do as my computers harddrive crashed and i reinstalled everything, but photobooth never reinstalled on either of the two disks, how can i get it back? What you likely need to do is to install the bundled applications that would come on disk 2 of your restore set. This will include things like Photobooth and iLife.

Anonymous asked: Whenever I don't have my MacBook Pro plugged in to the charger, it tends to randomly go to sleep mode even when on full battery. I can get it to boot it up again, but there are periods where it won't stay booted for more than 30 seconds before going back to sleep mode. I've had this problem since I bought it in May. Do you have any suggestions?

fucknourl-deactivated20100228 asked: i need help. i turned off my mac then when i turned it on again after like 30 or so minutes the screen got screwed up. parts of it are kind of blurry and whenever i move the mouse pointer, the whole thing moves. what should i do?

alloverthefuckingplace asked: Hi, I don't now if you want to answer this question or not but here it is.
I'm having problems with Utorrent. It's stealing all my bandwidth, so I can't surf or nothing. Second problem is that it downloads really slow and I have no idea why.
If you have some ideas and don't want to publish it please send me an email. dokkans@gmail.com

tunepickoftheday asked: I am having a impossible time opening a port in my firewall for ustream could you help me out I am running osx 10.5 leopard thanks

Anonymous asked: My white Macbook is less than two years old. The screen's been acting up - its performance is erratic. It'll black out when I raise the screen to it's upright position; it'll light up again when i push the screen down to halfway up. Sometimes it works perfectly well and sometimes it won't light until the laptop is almost closed. My friend told me this was because I had...

jamfris asked: I can imagine having repeat questions is not good... but Tumblr's way of handling old content it's not the best...

Maybe (although I understand that would require lots of work) you can do a post which recolects in topics your old stuff, where newbies can find fast about you wrote...

Just saying :)

miphun asked: new to tumblr - how can I post an rss feed to update my page automatically?
thanks!

Noticing a trend...

I’ve noticed that I’m starting to get questions that are repeats or very similar to other questions. I don’t want to be rude and ignore your question but I also don’t want the content to seem repetitive. So, I ask one thing. First give a quick trip over to the Tumblelog’s real site here. You’ll see a search box over on the right side. Throw in a word or two...

annfran asked: thanks. one more question: where is the best place to buy more memory?

etiswhatuc asked: Hi, I figured since you're an apple expert that you might be able to help me out on this, and i apologize if this has been asked before. I just recently purchased a macbook, and I also have an itouch. Is there a way to transfer my songs from my itouch to my macbook because my previous computer died and killed my itunes library with it. Or is there software free or cheap that can do this?...

Anonymous asked: How do you move document folders to a new account? Because I moved them but every time i want to save something in those folders, I have to give authentication. how can i move them to a new account without having to give a password?

SweetAppSunday - Handbrake

This week’s SweetAppSunday app is a little something called Handbrake. Do you have a video-capable iPod or an iPhone? Ever wish you could bring a DVD with you? This is where Handbrake is your friend. Handbrake will rip DVDs for you so you can store them on your Mac. Once they’re on your Mac it’s a hop, skip and a jump to iTunes and then to your iPhone. It may sound daunting,...

Anonymous asked: Hello. I was wondering: how do you transfer your bookmarks from one username to another? I made a new account on my Mac and I don't want to have to re-favorite everything that I had on my other account name. I tried googling it but all I get are how to transfer them from one computer to another, etc.

Anonymous asked: Is it possible to password-protect regular folders on my machine?
(I am on Snow Leopard, and logged in as the admin, but I don't want to make other user accounts because I need to be logged in at all times.)

3djon asked: Perplexing problem for ya,

Uni-body MBP started acting unusually sluggish during a big DL, so slow that the spinning wheel of death wouldn't go away after 10 min so I did a force restart (command-control-powerbutton). MBP restarts, but then hangs on the grey apple logo screen with spinning loading indicator on the bottom of the apple logo. It literally hangs there for as long...

iamsteve-deactivated20120326 asked: I am posting a link to my blog post which asks a question about a strange issue I am having with my iPod Nano. I figure that you may be able to answer this, given your knowledge of Macs and Apple products. I am doing it this way because there are some screenshots which will prove essential to the question. The question is about why the storage and usage capacities differ on the actual iPod and...

annfran asked: i'm using a macbook unibody, and i'm curious. what is the max RAM it can have?

Anonymous asked: I am wondering if there is a way to remporarily prevent people (who work for me in my office) using distracting websites like tumblr, haha, and facebook maybe, without them knowing I blocked the sites. It should just look like the server is down.
Thanks, M.

ohugo-deactivated20120602 asked: okay now that i've gone through every question on your tumblr i can confidently ask this question: i have a new macbook pro (bought in nov. 09), 3.06 ghz dual core, 4gb ram, 500gb hdd (with at least 125 gbs free). i wanted to transfer, not copy, about 6000 jpg files from my 16gb usb stick (30 MBPS / 200X) to a folder on my mackbook. so i selected all the files from the usb stick, held down...