Mac|Life - How-Tos

How to Keep Multiple Lists of Contacts on One OS X Account

Cory Bohon — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 22:34:14 +0000

My wife and I share an iMac with OS X 10.8.2. How do I create a second Contacts database for my wife to use? She doesn’t want to share my contacts. We currently use Contacts to sync our contacts between our iOS devices. Any options?

While Contacts does not allow for multiple databases (unless you want to use multiple accounts in OS X), there is an easy solution when you have a single shared OS X account: using Groups.

To do this, open the Contacts app, and select File > New Group. The new group will appear in the Contacts left-hand sidebar. Edit the name to your liking (such as “My iPhone,” “Her iPhone,” etc.), and then proceed to drag the contacts destined for the particular user’s iPhone from your All Contacts group to the newly created group. You’ll want to do this for as many different iPhone users as you wish to sync.

Create one group per user—the contacts in this group will be synced to each individual iPhone to avoid unwanted contacts.

By doing this, we’ve created one group per iPhone user that we will be syncing. When syncing, all contacts will be entered into the All Contacts group, but the iPhone will only sync between the user’s group, so your wife won’t see your contacts on her iPhone and vice versa.

When you’re ready to sync the groups to your device, head over to iTunes and select your device, then the Info tab. Once there, ensure that “Sync Contacts” is checked, and then select the “Selected groups” radio button, and check the group that you’d like to sync. After doing this, only the contacts in that single group will be available on your iOS device.

iTunes makes it easy to sync just a single group of contacts to your iOS device.

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How to Seamlessly Add Zoom to QuickTime Videos Using iMovie

Cory Bohon — Tue, 28 May 2013 22:03:29 +0000

I want to make a video of my Mac screen with seamless screen-zooming. I have been using QuickTime Player to record the screen, and can zoom the screen during the recording, except that QuickTime continues to record the  full screen. I would like to avoid video segments if possible. Is there a solution to this problem?

QuickTime Player is great for doing short screen captures when you need only limited editing capabilities, but to do more professional screen captures with screen zooming and other niceties, you’ll want to turn to a screen-capture application like Screen Flow or Camtasia for Mac. These tools, while somewhat costly, provide excellent abilities for both recording and professionally editing your recordings in an iMovie-style interface.

A zoom effect, though difficult to make seamless, can be done in iMovie.

Alternatively, if you have the time and the editing prowess, you can use iMovie to import your QuickTime recordings and edit them to your liking. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Import the video clip into the project that you wish to zoom in on.

2. Click the video clip in the event browser that you wish to apply the zoom effect to.

3. Click on the “Crop” button on the middle pane that separates the top project workspace from the bottom.

4. Select the “Ken Burns” button located at the upper middle portion of the video editing screen.

5. Place the rectangles according to where you want the zoom effect to begin and end. The green rectangle denotes the start position, and the red rectangle denotes the stop position. The size of the rectangles denotes how much of a zoom will occur to fill the screen.

6. Click the Done button to save the changes for the particular video clip you’re working with.

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How to Reset a Previously Owned iOS Device

Cory Bohon — Tue, 14 May 2013 16:00:00 +0000

I got a fourth-gen iPod touch off of eBay. I have it named and have an Apple ID.  But, when I go to the App Store or Game Center, etc., the previous owner’s Apple  ID shows up and it asks for a password. How do I clean this up and get my Apple ID to show up?

The best way to “clean up” a device that was previously owned is to reset iOS and all of the settings to start anew. This will wipe the device of all of the previous owner’s settings and content, allowing you to enter your information as if the device were new.

To do this, go to Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings. After doing this, your device will restart, and will show the setup screen for the iPod touch, allowing you to enter your information to set up the device, including your Apple ID.

If you simply want to change the Apple ID, however, you can visit Settings > iTunes & App Stores. Once here, tap on the Apple ID button at the top of the view. A popup will let you sign out of the old account. You can then sign in with your new account.

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Terminal 101: Spell Check Your Documents

Cory Bohon — Mon, 13 May 2013 19:53:56 +0000

Every Monday, we'll show you how to do something new and simple with Apple's built-in command line application. You don't need any fancy software, or a knowledge of coding to do any of these. All you need is a keyboard to type 'em out!

Writing in the Terminal provides a distraction-free environment to get your thoughts onto digital paper; however, you may be missing a crucial modern-day writing convenience: spell checking. With a little command line utility called “spell,” you can easily see where spelling mistakes lie within your documents. Continue reading, and we’ll show you how to edit your way through a document in the Terminal.

Installing Spell

To install spell, you’ll need either Homebrew or MacPorts installed on your machine. Once you have that, open the Terminal and type in the following command:

In the case of Homebrew being installed, type:

brew install aspell

In the case of MacPorts being installed, type:

sudo port install aspell

If you are using MacPorts, you will be prompted to enter your administrator password before proceeding with the download and install. After installation, you’ll be returned to the terminal prompt.

Check a Document

To check the spelling of your document, we’ll use the aspell command to open a file and compare the words in the document against its built-in dictionaries. To do this, type the following command into the Terminal:

aspell -c file.txt

Replace “file.txt” with the file path and file name of the document that you wish to spell check. This will launch the interactive spell checker (interactive in the sense that you will be correcting the words in the document in the provided interface).

Your document will be opened, and the highlighted words will be words that the aspell program has detected as improperly spelled. To correct the spelling, you will type in the number that corresponds to the appropriately spelled word.

Once you have reached the end of your document, the changes will be saved, and you will be returned to the command prompt, ready to enter a new command.

Cory Bohon is a freelance technology writer, indie Mac and iOS developer, and amateur photographer. Follow this article's author on Twitter.

Terminal 101: Find and Replace Using Sed

Cory Bohon — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 18:13:16 +0000

Every Monday, we'll show you how to do something new and simple with Apple's built-in command line application. You don't need any fancy software, or a knowledge of coding to do any of these. All you need is a keyboard to type 'em out!

Sometimes you need to quickly replace a line of text across your documents. While you could open the documents and hand-edit them one-by-one, the easier solution is to use a Terminal command called “sed” that allows you to specify a string of text that should be substituted by another. With this command, you can easily find and replace occurrences of words a document, automatically. Continue reading, and we’ll show you how to put this powerful command to good use.

Substitute All Occurrences of Word in a Single File

If you have a single file in which you wish to replace all occurrences of a single word with another, you can easily do it using the following command:

sed 's/FindThisWord/ReplaceWithThisWord/g' file.txt

Replace the word “FindThisWord” in the above command with the word you wish to be replaced, and substitute the word “ReplaceWithThisWord” in the above command with the word you wish to replace the word with.

This command will open sed, which will in turn print the text file to the screen, replacing the found word occurrences with the word you wish to use instead.

So, if we had the following document:

Apple is awesome!

We could run the following command to replace “Apple” in the above text document with “MacLife” instead:

sed 's/Apple/MacLife/g' sample.txt

The edited document will be printed to the screen for you to see.

Writing Changes to the File

All is good, but the above command doesn’t save the changes to the original file, it only prints the updated file to the screen. To write the changes back to an output file, you’ll use the following command instead:

sed -n 's/FindthisWord/ReplaceWithThisWord/gpw output.txt' file.txt

So, if we continue with the same example above, replacing “Apple” in the sentence with “MacLife,” then use the following command:

sed -n 's/Apple/MacLife/gpw output.txt' sample.txt

This will cause sed to not only change the file and print it to the screen, but will also cause the changes to be written back to a file called “output.txt” (you can change this name inside of the replacement string command.

Cory Bohon is a freelance technology writer, indie Mac and iOS developer, and amateur photographer. Follow this article's author on Twitter.

Terminal 101: Extracting RAR Files

Cory Bohon — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 19:04:13 +0000

Every Monday, we'll show you how to do something new and simple with Apple's built-in command line application. You don't need any fancy software, or a knowledge of coding to do any of these. All you need is a keyboard to type 'em out!

You’ve probably heard of ZIP files, and may have heard of TAR files, but RAR files are another compression technique with added benefits that you can use to send your files over the Internet or store on a disc. The advantages of RAR over ZIP is that RAR files can store the full file permissions, can be split into multiple files for easier transmission or storage, and have improved error handling and data redundancy in case your RAR file arrives broken due to transmission errors or bad sectors. Many users don’t know how to deal with RAR files, however, so we’ll show you how to extract their contents in this Terminal 101.

Installing unrar

The first step to using RAR files on your Mac is to install the unrar package from Homebrew or MacPorts. To do this, type in the following command if you’re using Homebrew:

brew install unrar

If you’re using MacPorts on your system, then type in the following command to install the unrar program onto your Mac:

sudo port install unrar

You’ll be required to enter your administrator password if you’re using MacPorts to complete the installation.

Listing contents inside the RAR file

Not sure if you wish to extract the contents of the downloaded RAR file? There’s an easy way that you can check to see what the contents of the file look like before you go through the extraction process. To do this, type the following command into the Terminal:

unrar l file.rar

Replace “file.rar” with the actual name of your RAR file. When you do this, you will get a listing of the files contained inside of the RAR package. It will list the file name, size, compression ratio, date, time, and permission attributes.

Testing the RAR file

If you believe that a file inside of your RAR file may be damaged, then you can test it using the unrar utility. To do this, type in the following command:

unrar t file.rar

Replace “file.rar” with the actual name of you RAR file. When this command is run, you will see the file listing of the contents of the RAR file, and an “OK” beside of the files that are verified as having passed the file integrity check.

Unrar-ing the file

To unrar your RAR file (i.e. to extract the contents of the RAR file), we’ll use the following command:

unrar x file.rar

Replace “file.rar” with the path and filename of the RAR file that you will be extracting, and then press the enter key. The contents of the RAR file will be extracted to your current working directory. If you wish to extract the contents of the file to a particular directory, use this command instead:

unrar e file.rar ~/pathToExtractTo

Replace “file.rar” with the path and filename of the RAR file that you wish to extract; and, replace “~/pathToExtractTo” with the path that you wish to extract the contents to.

For instance, if we had a file on our Desktop called “Sample.rar” and we wished to extract the contents to a folder on the Desktop called “MyFiles,” we could use the following command:

unrar e ~/Desktop/Sample.rar ~/Desktop/MyFiles/

This would extract the contents to the MyFiles folder on the desktop. If the MyFiles directory doesn’t already exist, the unrar utility will create it for you automatically and place the files inside.

It is rare that you run into RAR files online, but in the event that you do, this unrar utility will come handy and allow you to handle the contents of the RAR file with ease.

Cory Bohon is a freelance technology writer, indie Mac and iOS developer, and amateur photographer. Follow this article's author on Twitter.

How to Diagnose a Slow Mac Using Activity Monitor

Cory Bohon — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:00:00 +0000

I’ve had an iMac for over five years, upgrading to Snow Leopard about four months ago. My drive is only about one-third full. Recently, I started noticing that when I open files, they wouldn’t open for 15–20 seconds, or would beach ball while waiting. I’ve restarted and run Disk Utility, but to no avail.

When applications are loading at a slow pace, there can be a number of factors contributing to the pokiness. One of the first places you’ll want to check is Activity Monitor (located in the Applications > Utilities folder). This application can be used to check the vital signs of your system’s performance while it’s running.

The System Memory tab of Activity Monitor will give you an overview of the free and used memory in your system.

With all of the applications you typically have open remaining open, click on the “System Memory” section. If you have little to no “Free” memory (or the Free memory is below a few hundred megabytes), or have Swap Used, then you’ll want to consider getting more RAM for your system. If swap space is used, then this means that your computer has run out of physical memory and is using a portion of your hard drive as temporary storage space. This will lead to longer wait times, as your hard drive is the slowest part of your machine, and whenever the computer has to store or retrieve data from it, you’ll have longer wait times.

Next, check the CPU usage. If your “% User” is substantially high (say, always above 50%), then you may have applications running that are using more system resources than needed. Consider closing unused or unneeded applications. You can also use the Process drop-down menu to select “My Processes.” Check the list to see if any unused processes are currently running. If they are, consider closing them.

Finally, check to ensure that all users have logged off your system (if you have a multi-user Mac). With multiple users  logged in, your system’s resources will be taxed more than  with just a single user.

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MacLife 101: Using Mail Drafts in iOS

Cory Bohon — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 20:57:02 +0000

The Mac|Life 101 series is where you can come to learn new and simple ways to do things with Apple’s desktop and mobile operating systems. Whether you’re new to the platform, or just want to learn a new technique, then MacLife 101 is for you.

We’ve all been there: You need to write an email, but you don’t have the time to devote fully right now. If only iOS had a feature that would let you save new messages you’re composing, then finish writing them later. Luckily, it does, and we’ll show you this somewhat hidden feature in the iOS Mail app that lets you easily write a new email, save it, and then revisit and finish writing it later.

Creating a Draft Message

To create a draft message, simply tap on the Compose message button in the toolbar at the bottom of the Mail application in iOS.

After you’ve composed your message, and want to save it for sending later, you can tap on the Cancel button in the upper, left-hand corner of the Mail app as if you were going to exit the compose view. If you have made changes to the compose view, then it’ll ask whether you wish to “Delete Draft,” “Save Draft,” or “Cancel.” Tap on “Save Draft.”

Viewing Your Saved Drafts

Being able to save your draft emails is nice, but where do they go? You’ll notice there’s no way to view the drafts in the Mailboxes overview. To view a list of all the drafts you saved for all of the email accounts on your device, tap and hold on the Compose message button (the same button that you tap on to create a new email).

In this view, you have a button to create a New Message, and below that, all of your Previous Drafts appear in a list. Tap on any of the previous drafts to have them open in a new compose view, ready to finish and send to the recipient; or, delete the drafts by swiping from left to right on the draft item in the list.

Cory Bohon is a freelance technology writer, indie Mac and iOS developer, and amateur photographer. Follow this article's author on Twitter.

How to Back Up Files from Other OSes Using Parallels

Cory Bohon — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 01:44:12 +0000

I recently bought my first iMac and am running Mountain Lion. I am also running Parallels 7, which provides a virtual machine environment, to run Windows 7 and various Windows programs. My Mac files are backed up via Time Machine, but what do I need to do in order to ensure my Windows files are being backed up properly?

With Parallels, VMWare Fusion, VirtualBox, and other applications that run the Windows platform (and other OSes) in a virtualized environment, all of the files, programs, etc., in that environment are stored in a single hard drive file that resides on your Mac.

For Parallels, a “.pvm” file is created when you install a new operating system. By default, these files are stored in your Documents > Parallels folder in your user account. If you haven’t changed any of the Time Machine settings, then Time Machine will automatically back up this location whenever a backup is started.

Parallels’ self-contained “.pvm” file that contains the data associated with your virtual machine can be found in Documents > Parallels.

For safekeeping, however, you can also create another backup of these files by following these steps to ensure a clean backup is created:

1. Shut down your Parallels OSes.

2. Close Parallels.

3. Copy the .pvm files from the Documents > Parallels folder onto an external drive.

Since the virtual machines (and all associated files) are self-contained, you can simply copy back the .pvm and open it in Parallels to run it without issue, should you run into a situation in the future where you need to restore your machine.

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Terminal 101: 4 emacs Easter eggs

Cory Bohon — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 17:51:41 +0000

Every Monday, we'll show you how to do something new and simple with Apple's built-in command line application. You don't need any fancy software, or a knowledge of coding to do any of these. All you need is a keyboard to type 'em out!

Easter eggs are fun, hidden features that are implemented in software for the user to find. The developers of emacs (the text editor built into Mac OS X, and many other Unix-based systems) included many hidden Easter eggs to be discovered by its users. We’ll highlight a few of them here for you to try out.

1. Mud

MUDs (or Multi-User Dungeon) are an old-school game play experience that allowed multiple people to play text-based role playing games over the Internet. While most of these games have died down in popularity, you can still experience a similar text-based game in emacs.

Simply open Terminal, and type the following command followed by enter:

emacs -batch -l dunnet

Once launched, you’ll be able to interact with the game by typing commands as you’re lead throughout the text-based world. Type “help” if you get stuck.

2. Life

Grow your very own life form by using emacs' “life” program. Once it runs, it’ll begin generating randomly. It’s a cool cellular automaton on your Mac (in fact, it might very well be the only cellular automaton on your Mac). To give it a spin, type the following command into the Terminal:

emacs

Then, press esc on your keyboard, followed by the “x” key, and then type in “life.” After pressing enter, a randomly generated cell will begin forming on your screen. It’s pretty nifty, and extremely random. See how many generations can be generated! Ours went through 204.

3. Tetris

Want to play a game of Tetris without downloading any expensive app? Don’t worry! It’s built right into emacs. Simply use the following command, and you’ll be trying to fit all of the pieces together:

emacs

Then, press esc on your keyboard, followed by the “x” key, and then type in “tetris.” After pressing enter, you’ll be instantly thrown into a game of Tetris. Use the left and right arrow keys to move the pieces, use the up arrow to change the piece direction, and use the down arrow to instantly move the piece to its bottom-most location.

4. Free Psychoanalysis

So, have all of the April Fool’s Day pranks gotten a little out of hand? Not a problem, because your Mac includes a free program that will give you free psychoanalysis for all of the pain you’ve encountered today (not to be used in place of a real doctor, however). Simply use the following command:

emacs

Then, press esc on your keyboard, followed by the “x” key, and then type in “doctor.” After pressing enter, you’ll be instantly thrown into the psychotherapist’s office. Describe your problem, then each time you’re done talking, press the return key twice. The “doctor” will offer up advice, and talk you through your problems.

Cory Bohon is a freelance technology writer, indie Mac and iOS developer, and amateur photographer. Follow this article's author on Twitter.