You asked for help with the thorniest problems facing Mac, iPhone, and iPad owners, and we answered, providing 50 foolproof solutions that’ll come in handy for anyone who uses Apple gear.

For months now, we’ve been asking you to send us your most burning Apple questions, and to put it mildly, you came through. The queue in our inbox looked longer than the lines that curled around NYC’s 5th Avenue Apple Store for the launch of the very first iPhone. And when we dug into the meat and potatoes of your queries, we could only marvel at the insightful list of vexing technical issues and twinkle-in-your-eye trivia tidbits that you challenged us with. We distilled all those inquiries down to the 50 best, most burning questions about Macs, iPhones, iPads, and Apple itself. Then we put our crack team of experts on the job of coming up with this ultimate answers guide for all things Apple. Struggling with iTunes syncing? iPhone backups? RAID cards? iPad printing? Or just wondering exactly what Steve actually wears every day? The answers await, backstopped and bulletproofed by the pros at Mac|Life.

1. Duplicates in iPhoto

I can’t find any options in iPhoto for removing all duplicate pictures in one fell swoop, and I don’t want to find and delete them all myself. Any ideas?

iPhoto lacks iTunes’ duplicate-deleting prowess, but the shareware app Duplicate Annihilator can fill this gap and free your photo library of clutter. Despite the name, it identifies and tags duplicate pictures with a keyword so you can collect them in a Smart Folder to review and annihilate at your leisure.

2. Wi-Fi Dropouts

Since upgrading to Snow Leopard, my Wi-Fi connection randomly drops for no reason. I still get Wi-Fi reliably on my iPhone, and my wife gets it on her PC. Any advice?

This problem seems to be affecting many Snow Leopard users, so we’ve come up with a series of steps that should resolve it. Start with the first and work down until the problem goes away:

» Update to Mac OS X 10.6.3 or later.

» Restart your modem and router.

» Upgrade your router’s firmware to the latest version, particularly if it’s a non-Apple router.

» Turn AirPort off then on again from your menu bar.

» In your Network System Preference, create a new location and delete all of the previous locations.

One of our best tips for troubleshooting Wi-Fi connection problems is to create one brand-new location and then delete all of your previous locations.

» Within your new location, drag AirPort to the top of the service order by clicking on the gear icon and choosing “Set Service Order.”

» Delete all of your preferred networks. To see your preferred networks, click on AirPort in the left margin, then the Advanced button, then the AirPort tab.

» Within that Advanced area, click on the TCP/IP tab and turn off IPv6. Then, go into the DNS tab and make sure that your DNS servers are correct. If in doubt, try Google’s DNS servers of 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.

» Run Keychain First Aid in Keychain Access, which is located in your Utilities folder.

» Manually change your router’s wireless channel to another channel to avoid interference with other wireless networks. See which channels are being used by other networks with a utility like AirRadar ($20, koingosw.com).

» Turn off 802.11n mode on your router, leaving it in 802.11b/g mode only.

» Change the security settings on your router from WEP to WPA/WPA2.

» Zap the PRAM on your Mac (get instructions here).

3. Multitouch Gestures

Why can’t I do the one-finger double-tap to open documents in Snow Leopard?

You can absolutely use the one-finger double-tap on your Multi-Touch trackpad to open documents in Snow Leopard. Simply go into your Trackpad System Preference and make sure that “Tap to Click” is checked. Your confusion may also stem from the fact that your Multi-Touch trackpad is capable of understanding many gestures. So if you’ve enabled “Dragging” or “Drag Lock,” you might be holding down your finger too long after the second tap. If you’ve enabled “Secondary Click,” you might be tapping in the wrong area of your trackpad.

4. Syncing iPhone Photos

When I sync my iPhone, all 6,000 of my MacBook Pro’s photos move to the iPhone--very uncool! How do I remove them from the phone and ensure one-way photo transfers to the Mac in the future?

That’s at least 5,950 pictures too many. Just connect your iPhone to your MacBook, then select the iPhone in the iTunes sidebar. Click the Photos tab, where you can choose to transfer none of your pictures or just specific iPhoto Albums, Faces, and Events to your iPhone. Re-sync to apply your new settings and get back a few gigabytes on your iPhone.

5. Uninstalling

My Mac still runs processes from a program I deleted. How do I delete an application entirely and prevent this from happening?

Unfortunately, there’s no standard way to remove a program from your Mac, but some developers simplify the job by including an uninstaller with their application. It may lurk in the main folder of the app you want to terminate--check those subfolders!--or it might be in the original installer itself. Launch the installer and proceed through it carefully. An uninstall feature may be obvious, or it could be hidden among options to customize the installation process. Be sure to quit the program you want to delete before uninstalling it.

If an application didn’t come with an uninstaller, then the only way to delete it is to drag it to the Trash. However, this won’t remove preferences and other support files left behind on your Mac. You can use Spotlight to search for the deleted application’s name to find these strays, but if you have a lot of applications to remove, consider investing in a dedicated uninstaller like CleanApp, AppZapper, or AppCleaner. These programs automate the process of zapping unwanted programs--and their stuff--off your drive for good.

6. File Compression

I’d like to save hard drive space with the Finder’s Compress command, but I’m not getting useful results. I recently compressed a 117.4MB file to just 116.7MB. Am I doing something wrong?

Not all file types can be compressed with the same space-saving results. For example, compressing a ZIP archive won’t make a significantly smaller ZIP file. Some files, such as JPEGs, MP3s, and other media formats, have a certain level of compression already built in, but the sizes of text files and uncompressed image file formats can be dramatically reduced with ZIP compression.

7. Remote Control

When I use my iPod touch as a remote for my Apple TV, it appears to only give me access to the Apple TV’s library as if it were an iPod. Is there a way to use the iPod touch like the traditional Apple remote? For example, can I use the touch to navigate to the YouTube app and search for videos, or to browse the movie rentals?

Apple’s Remote app for the iPhone and iPod touch lets you control the playback of media that you’ve already purchased or downloaded. But for content that doesn’t live on your Apple TV, such as YouTube videos or the iTunes Store, you’ll still need your traditional Apple remote to navigate to those screens. However, the good news is that whenever an onscreen keyboard appears on your Apple TV, the Remote app will display its own keyboard, which lets you quickly type what you’re searching for.

8. Photo Migration

Can Faces and Places data in iPhoto ‘09 be moved to another Mac, or do I have to click on all those faces and enter all those locations again?

All your vacation sites and friendly faces will transfer to another Mac with OS X’s Migration Assistant, or you can drag your iPhoto library file from your Pictures folder to the same location on a new Mac. When you launch iPhoto on the new machine, you’ll be told the locations of pictures containing GPS data must be retrieved again, but custom locations you’ve entered yourself (for pictures taken with older cameras, say) will remain intact.

9. Gmail, Behave!

I sync Gmail with OS X’s Mail, but when I delete a message from Mail, it remains in Gmail’s All Mail folder in the sidebar. What’s the right mailbox setting to move a message deleted in Mail to Gmail’s Trash?

All your Gmail goes into the All Mail folder, whether or not it’s been recently deleted and no matter which Gmail folder label is attached to the message. Google’s default IMAP Mail settings (available here) are correct, but to send a Mail message directly to Gmail’s Trash, you’ll have to drag it to the [Gmail]/Trash folder in Mail’s sidebar.

10. Crash-Tastic

It always happens at the worst possible time: I’ll be using my PowerBook G4 when the screen suddenly dims and shows a Rosetta Stone’s worth of languages telling me to restart the computer. Why does this keep happening, and how can I stop it?

Ouch. What you’re describing is a kernel panic, a cute name for a not-so-cute problem. An operating system’s kernel acts as a bridge between applications and the computer’s hardware, and kernel panics are the last-ditch efforts of the operating system to recover from serious conflicts between them. The chief causes of kernel panics are faulty RAM and software incompatible with the operating system you’re running. Unfortunately, that range could include any number of bad things that may be happening on your poor PowerBook.

Happily, even a kernel panic isn’t the end of the world, and we can offer some pointers to help you figure out what’s wrong. The first step is to look at your Mac’s history. Was there a time when it didn’t get kernel panics? Think back to any (and we mean any) new hardware or software you installed before the panics began. Update or uninstall them one item at a time to isolate the panics’ cause until you narrow down the trouble. Also note which hardware and software you’re using just before they strike--there may be a pattern. Whatever the issue, your Mac isn’t happy, so be sure to back up important files and verify your hard drive with Disk Utility regularly.

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