30. What a Mess!

One of my co-workers spilled juice on his older MacBook Pro, and now the keys are sticky (when pressed down, they don’t pop up right away). What’s the best way to clean up?

Sounds nasty! Although this particular spill has long dried, we’ll start these cleanup instructions from the moment right after spillage to make them more widely useful. So: Immediately power down, disconnect the power cord from the MacBook, and remove the battery (if it’s removable). After doing as much as you can with paper or cloth towels, turn the machine over with the lid partly open to allow the liquid to drain, making sure that the laptop doesn’t close all the way. Give it about 72 hours to completely air dry and then take apart the machine to thoroughly clean the innards. The website iFixIt.com has great step-by-step guides to taking the keys off and getting your MacBook back to normal. When dabbing at disassembled keys and other parts, we recommend a bit of gauze lightly dampened with rubbing alcohol.

31. Airport Fizzles

I stream my music from iTunes to an AirPort router, but it frequently cuts out. What can I do?

First, make sure your iTunes and AirPort software are up to date. If the problem persists, move your router away from possible sources of interference. Wi-Fi is convenient, but it’s not an exact science. Signals can be impeded by microwaves, wireless phones, thick masonry, and more. If dropouts continue, try changing the channel on which your AirPort broadcasts in the Wireless tab of the AirPort section of AirPort Utility.

32. Family Planning

My wife and I have our own iPhones and iTunes accounts, and we’re adding an iPad to the happy family. Can we sync both iPhones and the iPad (plus our Apple TV) to a single iTunes account, and share our apps on all devices without affecting our current library and future purchases?

Bad news first: there’s no way to merge multiple iTunes accounts into one, so your family will have to keep juggling separate accounts and purchases from your iPhones, Apple TV, and bouncing baby iPad. The good news is that apps, like DRM-protected movies and TV shows, can be used on up to five authorized computers and the iDevices that sync to them. Just open iTunes, select Apps in the sidebar, then drag iPhone applications you want to share from iTunes to a networked computer or removable hard drive. Select File > Add to Library in iTunes on the second authorized computer, then choose the exported apps to load them into that computer’s library. These apps won’t retain saved data from the original computer, but otherwise they’ll be fully operational and can be updated normally. Apple TV purchases, however, will still be tethered to one of your computers. But even these files can be synced and transferred to multiple computers and iDevices.

Here’s the better news: Home Sharing, introduced in iTunes 9, simplifies this process by allowing users to drag and drop media to shared computers within iTunes. Activate Home Sharing by selecting Advanced > Turn On Home Sharing. Repeat this step on all your computers, entering one iTunes account username and password on each. Then you can drag media from shared libraries in iTunes’ sidebar into a computer’s local library at will. Future purchases can be shared automatically by clicking the Settings button at the bottom of Home Sharing iTunes library, then selecting which media you’d like to share. Once you set up all computers on your network, syncing works automatically, zapping new media off to each machine.

33. Double the Addresses

Why do I have duplicate Contact entries on my iPhone but not on my Mac?

Odds are your iPhone has gained multiple groups of contacts after syncing them both wirelessly through MobileMe and through iTunes when you connected your iPhone to your Mac. Whatever the cause, check your iPhone Contact app’s Groups. If you see a group named From My Mac in addition to groups you’ve created in OS X’s Address Book, it’s a sign your iPhone thinks you have two distinct sets of friends.

It's hard enough to find the contact you're looking for--who needs duplicate entries?

To fix the problem, first back up your Mac’s contact data. Connect your iPhone to iTunes, uncheck Sync Address Book Contacts in the Info tab, then re-sync. If that doesn’t remove the extra contacts, turn off MobileMe contact syncing in Settings on your iPhone, choosing to delete the existing contacts on your phone. Next, turn Contact syncing back on, and choose to merge MobileMe’s data onto your iPhone if asked. Now you should have just one set of contacts shared between your iPhone and Mac. You’ll have half the friends, but half the hassles.

34. Conquer Syncing

What's the most elegant way to sync iTunes libraries between work and home computers?

We use SuperSync, a program that lets you sync your iTunes library among multiple computers on local networks or over the Internet. SuperSync’s busy interface can seem a little daunting, but in just a few quick steps, you can start copying music from your crib to your cubicle and back again. Casual Fridays will never be the same.

A. Buy the Software

SuperSync looks and feels kinda like iTunes, but is a whole different beast.

To get started, you’ll need a copy of SuperSync running on both your home and work computers. Two licenses will set you back $24, or you can snag ten for $34 and give one to your manager for Boss’s Day.

B. Make the Connections

When you first launch SuperSync on your home Mac, it loads and displays your iTunes library in an iTunes-alike window organized by genre, artist, and playlist. While SuperSync may look a little like iTunes (and it can even play some unprotected audio files), it’s really a conduit and control panel for syncing, not a jukebox. Your DRM-protected files must still be played by an authorized copy of iTunes, although SuperSync will transfer them just fine.

SuperSync can even keep metadata updated across different Macs.

If your music collection doesn’t live in your Mac’s Home folder, you can point SuperSync to a library stored on a remote or network drive and share from there. To set up sharing, just check the obvious boxes and enter a password in the application’s Network preferences. While you’re there, you can fine-tune what you sync and how. For instance, you can keep specific media types--all videos, for instance--out of your shared library and pick which metadata changes will be synced back to your home machine. Whether you simply want to copy files or meticulously update their play counts, ratings, and more across your computers, SuperSync has your back.

C. Start the Sync

To sync your library, install and launch SuperSync on your work machine, then turn on sharing and connect to your home computer. This is easiest (and fastest) on a local network, but you can sync your music over the internet by manually forwarding ports on your home router, or by using a UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) router and letting SuperSync do the work for you.

When the syncing starts, SuperSync's interface gets pretty busy.

Once you get both computers talking to each other, you can synchronize your entire library in one go, sync individual files, or transfer albums, artists, and whole genres at once. You can even sync your playlists--both their music files and the lists themselves in the iTunes sidebar. Naturally, files added to iTunes on your work computer can be synced back to your home Mac. Just finish your download in iTunes, then phone home with SuperSync. New files will be noted automatically and can be transferred with a click.

35. Hot Flash

My MacBook Pro has been acting strangely. It will become sluggish, get hot, and the fans will come on at full speed. Activity Monitor shows that a process called “PTMD” is taking over 60 percent of my CPU. How do I prevent PTMD from taking over my Mac?

This may not be a common question, but it certainly is a burning one! According to Apple’s Mac OS X Reference Library, PTMD stands for “platform thermal monitor daemon,” and it communicates any OS notifications effecting thermal conditions to your hardware. This daemon is supposed to automatically quit itself when it’s done communicating, but apparently your Mac erroneously thinks that its thermal conditions are continuously changing, so it’s trying to let your hardware continuously know this incorrect information.

This seems to be a new problem that has cropped up for some users in Mac OS 10.6.3, so hopefully it will be fixed in a future update to the operating system. In the meantime, you can manually quit out of PTMD in Activity Monitor (launch it from your Utilities folder) whenever it starts acting up. You may also try resetting your Mac’s System Management Controller, which is responsible for thermal management (follow the directions here).

36. It's a RAID

I have Apple’s RAID card in my Mac Pro, and it always pops up this error message: “Write cache disabled due to insufficient battery charge.” But...what is a RAID card, and what should I do?

Apple's Mac Pro RAID Card improves RAID performance and reliability.

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent/Inexpensive Disks, and it’s a tech that lets you combine multiple hard drives so they appear as one. RAIDs can either be mirrored or striped--in the first, each drive is an exact copy (or mirror) of the other drives, so if one fails, you’ll still have all of your data intact on another (known as redundancy). If you configure your drives as a striped RAID, the storage space of all of your drives is added together into one larger drive. This will give you increased performance and increased storage space, but no redundancy unless you’ve configured your RAID with parity handling (which uses a portion of each drive to hold identical copies of data from one of the other drives). RAIDs can be controlled by software like Apple’s Disk Utility or the excellent SoftRAID ($129, softraid.com), or they can be controlled by hardware like your RAID card. The main advantages of a hardware-controlled RAID are increased performance and reliability. With the error message you’re receiving, it sounds like the battery on your RAID card has died, so take it into Apple to get replaced.

37. iPad 2

What upgrades will we see in the next version of the iPad? (We emailed a trio of well-known tech experts for their predictions.)

Daniel Lyons
Newsweek

"I'd guess the following:

» Front-facing camera for videoconferencing
» Multitasking (duh, already announced)
» Higher-resolution screen
» No Flash
» Gorgeous ads that will change your life
» Unicorn tears"

Christopher Null
Yahoo! News, Technology

"Dual cameras--a front-facing camera for videoconferencing will be huge for opening up a whole new market for the iPad."

Dylan Tweney
Wired

"One of the things most obviously missing from the current iPad is a webcam. This would instantly transform the iPad into a videophone, and its size—just slightly bigger than the human face—would be perfect for face-to-face video chats. It’s also likely that the next iPad will have more memory and a faster processor. If we’re lucky, it might have an HDMI port too, so you can hook it up to a TV to show off photos, videos, and apps. One thing it definitely won’t have, though, is support for Adobe Flash. That door is closed, probably forever."

38. Mac Van Winkle

When I wake my MacBook Pro from sleep, it doesn’t connect to my Wi-Fi. Sometimes it even forgets the Wi-Fi password. How the heck do I get it to remember?

First, check out the extensive troubleshooting steps that we gave in Question #2 to see if any of those ideas solve your problem. Beyond that, your problem may be caused by one of the following issues:

» Two Wi-Fi networks with the same SSID (wireless network name). For example, do you connect to one wireless router that’s named “Linksys” at work and then another router that’s named “Linksys” at home? If so, your Mac may be trying to apply the password from one router to the other router. Rename one of the wireless networks.

» Keychain problems. Launch Keychain Access (in Utilities) and delete any AirPort Network password entries for the wireless networks that are giving you problems.

» Preferred Networks problem. Go into your Network System Preference, click on AirPort, then the Advanced button, then the AirPort tab. Delete any unused networks, and drag your current network to the top of the list.

» Corrupt preference file. Trash the file located at Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.airport.preferences.plist and restart your Mac.

» Security incompatibilities. Try changing the type of wireless security on your router (for example, WPA instead of WEP).

» Wireless interference. Turn on interference robustness on your router or change the wireless channel.

» Your system may need a general maintenance. Run Disk Warrior on your machine, repair permissions with Disk Utility, empty the caches, and run the UNIX maintenance scripts with Cocktail.

39. Style Manual

What exactly does Steve wear on a daily basis?

We asked our team of fashion experts, and they said, “The same dang thing no matter what.” So we made them stalk the streets of Cupertino and watch hours of keynote footage to bring you the scoop on Steve’s sartorial secrets. That’ll show ’em.

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