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Odd Jobs: Sing Out Loud with Skype

Leslie Ayers — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:50:18 -0500

How a jazz singer and voice coach uses her Mac to help students master their vocal range, in person and over Skype.

Case Study: Sandy Cressman

Occupation: Singer and voice teacher

Gear: MacBook Air loaded with iLife, MakeMusic Finale (for musical notation), CD burner, MIDI keyboard, Zoom H2 digital audio recorder, preamp

Cressman and student Demetri Skentzos warm up with scales during a lesson at her studio.

A musician who loves her Mac--what’s so groundbreaking about that? Nothing, on the surface. But Sandy Cressman, a San Francisco singer and voice coach who specializes in Brazilian jazz and travels the world to perform and teach workshops, simply couldn’t ply her art--or her trade--without her MacBook Air and a slew of other digital tools.

Going the Distance

Cressman’s voice students sign on with her to improve their technique singing rock, jazz, and pop. “Some of my younger students definitely come in with American Idol in their minds,“ she says. But beyond that, goals run the gamut, from improvement for the sheer joy of it to prepping for live or recorded performances. Cressman primarily teaches from her home studio and at workshops, but a handful of her students take virtual lessons via Skype.

Finding the right voice teacher is a lot like finding a therapist, contractor, or hair stylist. Once you click with someone, you want to do what it takes to keep working with him or her.

When a German student asked if she taught over Skype, Cressman hadn’t tried it before, but she soon saw the advantages. “I realized if we have that connection and she feels comfortable with me, then that’s an important part of her being able to progress.”

Cressman records her voice and piano playing using a pro mic and preamp, ultimately sharing MP3 files with students or collaborators on disc or via YouSendIt.

Cressman had ruled out the idea of teaching over the phone, but the popularity of voice and video over IP made it practical for her to work with students from virtually anywhere. “Pitch and voice have a lot to do with observing muscles on the outside--whether there’s extra tension or not,” she says. “There’s so much you could be missing if you can’t see the students. It wasn’t until videoconferencing became easy that I could do that.”

One drawback to the method, however, is the split-second time delay that’s unavoidable with Skype or other VOIP solutions.

“We have a body of exercise scales and chords that they’re familiar with so that I can play to them and say, ‘Sing this scale on this syllable,’ and they sing it back to me. Unfortunately, we can’t play and sing together in live time.” To alleviate this, Cressman records the entire Skype session as well as any accompanying practice tracks and sends students the audio files via YouSendIt.com.

During Skype lessons, Cressman (shown) can see her student's face, jaw, and neck and hear their voice from thousands of miles away. The VOIP time delay poses a challenge, but Cressman gets the live-action view of the student she needs to coach them successfully.

For live lessons, Cressman sends students home with a CD of the exercises they worked on, so they can practice for the next time. She and the student sing directly into her studio mic, which goes into a preamp, then to the MacBook Air, then directly to her CD burner. GarageBand is her audio editor of choice.

Garageband Trumps Pro Tools

Cressman is familiar with industry-standard music editor Pro Tools, but for her needs, GarageBand is much more useful. “For getting down arrangement ideas quickly and for composing, it’s more than adequate.”

Cressman’s Intel MacBook Air replaced a 15-inch PowerBook G4. She occasionally misses the chunkier Mac’s built-in optical drive and larger storage capacity, but says the Air is much easier for her to schlep to and fro.

Besides heavy use of GarageBand, Cressman uses iPhoto to manage her personal photo library, which includes a collection of images of Brazilian percussion instruments.

“I can’t carry all of the instruments around with me,” she says. So she shows an iPhoto slide show accompanied by Brazilian jazz “to stress that my singers understand the rhythmic groove underneath samba and bossa nova.” Photos and audio of each instrument give workshop attendees a better understanding of how they work together in a Brazilian jazz percussion ensemble, or batucada.

Though she sometimes misses the power of her PowerBook G4, the Air's slim profile better fits Cressman's itinerant lifestyle and petite physique.

Cressman is also the lead singer in a group called Homenagem Brasileira. The group released two CDs, Homenagem Brasileira and Brasil - Sempre no Coração (Brazil, Forever in My Heart).

Cressman’s digital arsenal makes it possible for her to perform live with ensembles she doesn’t collaborate with regularly. “Jazz musicians typically have a much easier time saying, ‘OK we’re going to do a gig, play this and this, and choose from a common repertoire.’”

But when it’s Brazilian music, that’s not necessarily the case. “It’s not like I go and sing ‘Take the A Train’ or other jazz standards,” she says. The ability to get the musical notation down in Finale, record her vocals and piano backing in GarageBand, convert the tracks to MP3s, and share everything with fellow musicians as digital files via YouSendIt “makes it possible for us to do a nice concert and sound rehearsed, even though we haven’t rehearsed.”

How to Make Your Solo GarageBand Projects Come Alive

Joe Rybicki — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 11:31:20 -0500

Go beyond the sound of one man jamming with these helpful tips for your homemade recordings.

Difficulty Level:
Easy

What You Need:

> GarageBand 3 or later (current version is GarageBand 5, part of iLife '09, $79, www.apple.com)
> A GarageBand project you've already assembled, whether it consists of live instrument tracks you recorded via an audio interface, or software instrument tracks built in to GarageBand
> A microphone for recording vocals (optional, see step 7)
> Some time to tinker

GarageBand has done a great job of bringing user-friendly, intuitive home-recording tools to the masses. But while the results usually outstrip the four-track compositions of yore, most GarageBand creations sound like exactly what they are: one person recording simple musical sketches to a computer. Fortunately, with the application of a few simple pro-recording concepts, your solo projects can be so much more.

Drums

Nothing screams "amateur hour" louder than a clunky drum track. So getting your rhythm section right goes a long way toward giving your tunes a lifelike sound.

1. Keep the Sound Consistent

If you’re using loops, try to stay within a specific “family,” such as “Modern Rock Drums” or “Natural Drum Kit.” And avoid software-instrument (aka MIDI) drums wherever possible for your basic rhythm; they almost never sound as good as the real thing.

Split and rearrange drum tracks to add variety and finesse.

2. But Keep the Track Dynamic

Rigid, ultra-repetitive drum tracks sound like robots. Luckily, drum loops can be easily sliced, diced, and rearranged. Just move the play head to a beat marker (use the waveform in the Track Editor pane as a guide) and choose Edit > Split. By rearranging small sections of longer loops, you dramatically increase your rhythmic options.

Spike your drum tracks with irregular flourishes to break rigid patterns.

3. Garnish Moderately

Once you’ve got your drum track sketched out, get back in there and add some flourishes (yes, even in MIDI if that’s all you have available to you). Throw in a crash cymbal to accent section changes, an extra kick here and there, maybe even an additional snare hit periodically. The goal is to break up what is likely to still be a fairly rigid pattern. Just a few deviations can give the impression of great rhythmic variety, essential for a lifelike sound.

The track editor, toward the bottom of the window, lets you mix things up a little.

Guitars

If your compositions sound a bit "thin," often the problem is simply that all the sounds follow the same path to the listener's ears: straight ahead.

4. Play with Yourself

In guitar-focused genres, you absolutely need to record two rhythm guitar tracks, even if there’s technically only one guitar part. A single guitar almost always sounds lacking to ears used to traditional guitar-focused recordings. Plus, two guitars help cover each other’s mistakes.

5. Pan-Handle

Now, using the Track Pan knob (to the left of the Volume slider), move the guitar tracks slightly into the left and right speakers. This creates a sense of sonic space that does wonders for your sound. But go ahead and keep your blistering solo track in the middle channel.

Track Pan is your friend. Shove those rhythm guitars off to the side to give yourself room to wail.

6. Get Amped

Now you’ll want to experiment with the amp effects of each track to find different tones that complement each other. Don’t be afraid to mix clean tones with heavily distorted ones if the song allows; remember, variety is key.

Select Track > New Track > Electric Guitar to find GarageBand's built-in amp effects.

Vocals

Recording engineers recommend keeping vocal tracks as unadorned as possible. But there are some things you can do to improve the sound of your vocals

7. Use a Decent Mic

Most of us can’t afford the top-of-the-line microphones used by most studios, but you’d be amazed by how much of a impact a clear-sounding, quality mic in the $100-to-$200 range can have on your vocal mix. Muddiness is the enemy of a professional, lifelike sound.

Samson's CO3U USB studio condenser mic can be found for under $100 online.

8. Put the Squeeze On

Vocal tracks can wander all over the place in terms of volume. The solution: compression. In the Track Info pane, under Details, make sure Compressor is checked. If you still get volume spikes, click on the Edit button next to the Compressor drop-down and boost the Ratio.

Use compression to keep volume consistent and make mixing more manageable.

9. Get Beside Yourself

Well-placed harmonies give the impression of a full band at work. But if you’re not the harmonizing type consider simply doubling your lead vocal in spots—or actually, tripling: As with guitars, you want two different backing tracks, to pan left and right.

Bass

Bass track tend to be shoved into the background, and that's a shame. A solid bass line really brings an arrangement together.

10. Press to Fit

As with vocals, a bass track can have pretty dramatic volume swings. So lay the compression on thick here, too; keeping the volume consistent allows bass dynamics to be heard without overwhelming the mix.

Real instruments' compressor effect is found under the Edit tab.

11. Shape Your Tone

Choose a bass amp tone that contrasts with your guitar tones. That is, if your guitars sound “sharp”—think piercing metal solos or super-jangly British tones—choose a warmer, more rounded bass tone, like “Round Bass” or “Seventies Bass.” Conversely, if the guitars are all mellow tones and big, full chords, consider sharper tones like “Bright Bass” or “Edgy Bass.”

Sharpen or dull your bass sound in counterpoint to the guitars to help this underrated instrument stand out.

12. Everything Else: Rinse, Repeat

Most of the hints for recording these four basic instruments can apply to other instruments as well; experiment to find the combination that works best for your style. The best part about digital home recording is that you never run out of tape, and you never have to pay for studio time. So remember the most important rule: Have fun.

Apple Adds Three New GarageBand Artist Lessons

Roberto Baldwin — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:50:39 -0500

If you grow weary of Roxanne and her inability to stop partaking in the world's oldest profession, don't fret. Apple has posted three new artist lessons. So you can continue your Sting lovin' ways with brand new songs.

The new tracks are:

Sarah McLachlan - Angel
Sting - Fragile
Sting - Message in a Bottle

We can't wait to break out the geetars when we get home tonight and rock along with a song about being stranded on a desert island. It's like Lost without the creepy smoke monster. Afterwards, we'll take it down a notch and let Sarah McLachlan mesmerize us with her lesson for Angel.

Each artist lesson is $4.99 and available for download via GarageBand '09.

GarageBand '09

Roberto Baldwin — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:02:11 -0500

Even with the hundreds of samples available in GarageBand, the app has always suffered from a "That sounds like you made it in GarageBand" syndrome. Despite the variety of built-in loops and tracks, people still recognize certain bass lines and drum loops. It's a sure sign that GarageBand has become a go-to app among Mac users, but it also takes some of the fun out of creating music using the available samples. You could purchase a MIDI keyboard or plug a guitar into GarageBand and strum or plunk out your own sound samples, but then you would have to learn how to play those instruments.

Guitar Experience gives you some kickin’ amps and stomp boxes to work with.

Apple has finally recognized the hurdle GarageBand presents for those who want to make music but don't know how to play an instrument. By bundling lessons in GarageBand, Apple is shooting waaay past Rock Band and Guitar Hero's goal to give users the chance to realize their rock 'n' roll fantasies. Not only can you learn to play an instrument in GarageBand '09, you can learn from actual rock stars.

GarageBand launches with a splash screen showing you the options available within the application. Usually, we find splash screens that mirror what can be achieved from the menubar annoying. In this case, it's a welcome sight. Each feature opens a project timeline tailored to that task. It takes the guesswork out of getting a project set up correctly for an iPhone ringtone or composing a song on a MIDI keyboard.

After launching a project you'll notice some minor, but welcome tweaks to the interface. The Media Browser pane and Loops pane feel cleaner and more focused. But the real change is the Track Info pane. Visual representations of the chosen instrument tracks you're adjusting don't just look cool, they can actually help you in your composition. If you've ever seen a live performance with an instrument, and you couldn't figure out how to re-create the sound because you were unsure what type of guitar or piano you saw, you can cycle through various guitars and piano types until you see something that jogs your memory. With its help, you can recreate the hollow body sound of the Gibson Casino you saw John Lennon play. If you've been plugging your guitar into one of those tiny practice amps because you can't afford a nice tube amp or gigantic half stack, GarageBand should be on your list of must-haves after picks and cables. The new Guitar Experience puts five amps and 10 stomp boxes at your disposal. Clicking on the amps gives you the knob display so you can tweak your sound just as you would if you actually had the amp in front of you. As you cycle through the amps, your knob settings stay consistent and the amps look similar to those on amps you'd find in your local guitar shop. Just don't go looking for the Marshall logo on anything. All the amps are labeled with GarageBand badges.

Stomp boxes work in nearly the same fashion, but instead of cycling through the available boxes, you drag and drop up to five stomp boxes onto your rig. And, like the amps, you can adjust the knobs as if you were actually there. Unfortunately, turning the stomp boxes on and off is a mouse-click affair. This will certainly cramp your style if you try to use GarageBand's electric guitar feature to play live. Unless of course, you want to toss your mouse on the ground and stomp on it.

GarageBand’s amp controls are very close to the real thing.

All of those amps and stomp boxes don't mean much unless they sound like the genuine article. Good thing Apple took the time to make sure a tube amp sounds like a tube amp and a fuzz pedal sounds like a fuzz pedal. Beginners and guitar gods should be happy with the quality of the amp and stomp box re-creations. Sure, GarageBand won't sound as warm as a tube amp hooked up to a Gretsch. But you're going have about $7,000 more in your pocket for foregoing the real thing, and you'll get to have a pretty close digital rendition.

A fuzz pedal that sounds like a fuzz pedal--oh yeah.

All of the app's guitar technology is pretty pointless if you can't actually play the instrument. Apple recognizes that all over the world, guitars are sitting neglected in attics and closets because their owners never found time to take a lessons, or just found playing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” over and over from a lesson book too mind-numbing to keep at it. It's time to bust those dusty guitars out and buddy up to Tim, Apple's official instructor of all things musical.

Pick a stomp box, any stomp box.

Apple's most touted new feature in GarageBand is the ability to learn how to play the guitar or piano. The lessons are presented in easy-to-understand videos with the ability to customize the presentation of fingering, chord grids, tablature, and hand placement. Combine that with Tim's nonthreatening teaching style, and you have a teaching tool that'll show you that there's more to piano than the Chariots of Fire theme. In addition to teaching you the fundamentals of each instrument, Tim's affirmations and tips are a welcome change from dry lesson books. For example, Tim reminded us that while learning the guitar, our fingers are going to hurt for the first few weeks and we shouldn't get discouraged. It's normal. It was nice to feel reassured that having fingers so sore we couldn't push elevator buttons with our left hand didn't mean there was something wrong with our technique.

Apple bundles the first guitar and piano lessons with GarageBand. Additional lessons can be downloaded for free directly from within GarageBand. The progression from lesson to lesson seems natural, and giving beginners the chance to actually practice with a band at the end of each lesson is much nicer than playing “Stairway to Heaven” alone in your room. You can even adjust the mix of the band that accompanies you in the final practice number. This is especially helpful if you're not quite sure you're hitting the notes correctly, and you want to solo yourself or raise your audio level. On particularly difficult sections, in both lessons and while playing songs, you can slow down the video, and also select a lesson or song section or measure to loop over and over again, until you get comfortable. Our biggest complaint is that as you're playing a lesson or section, the notation jumps to the left as the play-along guide reaches the right of the screen. We wish we could adjust the notation to be continually moving from right to left instead of jerking suddenly.

If you grow weary of Tim's lessons, for $4.99 you can download Artist Lessons and get the straight scoop on each song directly from the artists themselves. The lessons follow the same teaching style as Tim's lessons with the addition of the story behind the song. While downloading the free lessons is a seamless affair, downloading Artist Lessons sends you to the Apple Online Store to complete the transaction. A one-click purchasing feature like that found in iTunes would be a welcome update in the future.

What You Learn from the Masters
Learning an instrument can be a harrowing task filled with sweat, tears, and in extreme cases, even some bloodshed. We all have our reasons for wanting to learn to play, but we’re willing to bet the number one reason for most people is when they hear a song and hope to be able to play something as beautiful some day. With Artist Lessons in GarageBand ’09, you can learn one of your favorite songs directly from the person who composed it—not some dude who created the tablature by listening to the song a thousand times.

What’s better than learning to play "Roxanne" from the man himself?

Each lesson is categorized as Easy, Medium, and Advanced, so you won’t spend cash on something you’re not ready to attempt.
Within each lesson, the artists—usually well-known musicians—teach you a simple and advanced version of their song. The artists seem genuinely interested in teaching you, and their instructions are easy to follow. The songs differ from the original, which is actually a treat. You also get to see the progression of the song as the artist interprets it.

The best part of each lesson is the story behind the song, as told by the artist. We don’t want to spoil the surprise of how the songs came into existence, but we did find ourselves going straight to the story part of each Artist Lesson. The $4.99 price tag doesn’t seem that steep when Sting is sharing his love of certain chords with you. Apple assures us that more artist lessons are on the way, but they wouldn’t let any details slip about which artists might be featured and when the lessons would be released. We have our fingers crossed that Prince can teach us to play "Purple Rain."

Record with Multiple USB Mics Simultaneously in GarageBand

Roberto Baldwin — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:09:40 -0500

A huge feature missing from GarageBand is the ability to record with multiple USB mics on different tracks at the same time. If you're recording a duet, or a podcast with more than one person, it's a pain.

If you're planning on singing Islands in the Stream or podcasting with a few friends, there is a way to get GarageBand to recognize all of your USB mics. All it takes is a quick trip to the Utilities folder to visit the Audio MIDI Setup app.

Difficulty level:
Medium

What you need:
> GarageBand '08 or later
> Mac OS 10.4 or later
> Multiple USB mics
> 30 minutes to spare

1. Mic Check

We grabbed three random mics. A Sennheiser Headset, Blue Eyeball and Rock Band mic.

Plug in all of your USB mics. We plugged ours into a powered USB, so you're not hindered by the available ports on your machine. Remember though, the more mics you plug in, the harder GarageBand has to work to record.

2. Audio Input Setup

Audio MIDI Setup is a great utility that no one knows about.

Go to Applications>Utilities>Audio MIDI Setup. Go to Audio in the menu bar and select Open Aggregate Device Editor.

You'll create one device for all of your mics.

Click on the plus button under the Aggregate Devices window.

Naming your new Aggregate Device now will help you later.

Click on the new Aggregate Device and rename it. We choose, Podcast Mics since we'll use this setup for podcasting.

This window will show you all of your audio in and out devices.

In the structure window you should see the USB mics you have plugged in. We have two mics and one mic/headset combo plugged in. Check the Use box beside the mics you want to use. For a headset, be sure to choose to Use the choice with the In option not the Out. In signifies audio in and Out signifies audio out.

Your Aggregate device should only have Audio In devices.

The choices you made will move to the top of the Structure list. We check the Resample option for our setup. Test your audio setup for best results. Click done and quit Audio MIDI Setup.

4. Make Sure GarageBand is Guided by Voices

GarageBand '09 launch screen.

Launch GarageBand. We started a podcast, but the process is exactly the same if you choose to create a song.

This is where naming your Aggregate Device comes in handy.

In the Menu Bar select GarageBand>Preferences. Select the Audio/MIDI tab. Select the Audio Input drop down and select the Aggregate Device you created using the Audio MIDI Setup. GarageBand will warn you that you will be changing the audio driver, select yes. Close the Preferences window.

5.Podcasting the Night Away

You need this panel to adjust the audio input settings.

Be sure the Track Info panel is visible.

It's easier to duplicate a track at the beginning than create a new one.

We've duplicated the Male Voice track so we have three tracks for our three USB mics.

Your device is split between the three mics. Choose the appropriate mic for the appropriate person.

Select the first voice track. In the track Info panel select Info Source. What has happened is that the Aggregate Device is seen as two stereo devices or three mono devices. Choose Mono 1 for your first voice track. Select the second Voice track and select Mono 2 Input Source. Select the third Voice track and select the Mono 3 Input Source. If you have more mics, continue until each track is assigned it's own Mono input Source.

6. All Together Now

Make sure all the red buttons are selected for recordings.

In order to record all the mics at the same time, you need to press the red record buttons on the Voice Tracks you want to recording. When you start recording, it may take GarageBand a few moments to begin. Remember, the more mics you have going at once the more processing power you're using.

All three podcasters can speak at once.

That's it. You can adjust each vocal track independently now which is especially helpful when you're using different types of microphones, or some of the podcasters are louder than others.

50 Things Every Mac Geek Should Know

Mac|Life Staff — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 06:01:09 -0600

Like a champion cyclist knows bike parts,a car buff knows model years, and a sports fan knows win-loss records, all Mac geeks worth the title must know these things.

Marketers and Madison Avenue operators like to reduce consumers to either/or “types”—paper or plastic, boxers or briefs, cotton or cashmere, Honda or Mercedes, Cristal or Bud--you get the idea. But what often fails to register in such a superficial worldview are the specific reasons behind what we choose when presented with a “this or that?” decision.

When it comes to computing, the question is Mac or Windows? And, as a Mac user, your allegiance to your platform of choice--as in marriage--isn’t entered into lightly. But once you renounce the Dark Side and join the growing legions of Mac enthusiasts, it’s not enough to maintain a casual connection to your Mac, iPhone, iPod, or Apple TV. The difference between a Mac user and a Mac geek isn’t just how attached you are to your Apple tech--or how often you publicly proclaim that attachment with logo T-shirts, “Think Different” bumper stickers, or by plastering everything you own with Apple logo stickers. Your level of geekitude depends on how deeply you strive to connect with your Mac and OS X--yeah, we know it sounds like psychobabble. The point, friends, is that being a Mac geek is distinguishable from being any other kind of tech geek, because although it helps to have some basic knowledge of technical geekery, like, say, the names of certain coding languages or the fact that Mac OS X is a Unix-type operating system, you need never have written or even seen a line of Unix code to join the ranks of Mac geekdom. All you need, really, is passion for your Apple gadgets--how you show it is up to you.

But to help give you the street cred--that is Mac knowledge--to back up the passion, we present the 50 things you really should know if you want to call yourself a Mac geek. If you’re a recent convert to the Way of the Mac, be sure you study this compendium so you can move up a few levels of geekitude. If you’re a longtime Mac geek, test your know-how against our list--and be sure to let us know what we missed by flaming us at editor@maclife.com.

1976 - 21-year-old Steve Jobs quits his job at Atari and persuades computer engineer Steve Wozniak to quit his job at Hewlett-Packard to start Apple Computer out of Jobs’ garage. On April 1, Jobs, Wozniak, and third founder, Ronald Wayne, introduce the first Apple computer, the Apple I personal computer kit, priced at $666.66.

1977 - Wayne sells his shares of the company back to Jobs and Woz for $800, and Apple Computer is incorporated on January 3 without him. On April 16, the Apple II is introduced at the first West Coast Computer Faire.

1980 - In May, the Apple III is released, competing with IBM and Microsoft in business computing.

1982 - Jobs, who started working on the Apple Lisa two years before, is pushed out of the development team because of in-fighting; he takes over the low-cost Macintosh project from Jef Raskin.

1983 - The Lisa team wins the development race, releasing the Lisa as the first personal computer sold to the public with a graphic user interface (GUI). Its high price and limited software doomed Lisa to commercial failure.

1984 - On January 22, Apple launches the Macintosh with the now-famous “1984” ad, shown during Super Bowl XVIII. Strong sales--a result, it’s now known, of the availability of the Apple LaserWriter printer and PageMaker desktop publishing software--lead the company to go public on September 7.

1985 - After in-fighting develops between Jobs and Apple Computer CEO John Sculley, Jobs resigns from Apple and founds NeXT Inc.

1991 - Apple introduces the PowerBook portable computer and the upgraded operating system known as System 7, which, with its enhanced networking capabilities and colorful interface, remained the architectural basis for the Mac OS until 2001. The company’s revenue was significantly increased with the success of the PowerBook and other products.

1994 - Apple joins forces with IBM and Motorola to create the PowerPC Reference Platform.

1997 - Apple CEO Gil Amelio decides to purchase NeXT and bring Jobs back to Apple as an advisor. On July 9, Amelio is ousted, and Jobs becomes interim CEO. At Macworld Expo, Jobs announces that Microsoft will release new versions of its Office suite for the Mac.

1998 - Apple introduces the all-in-one iMac, designed by Jonathan Ive. With sales of almost 800,000 units in the first five months, the iMac put Apple in the black for the first time since 1993.

2001 - Apple announced Mac OS X, based on NeXT’s OPENSTEP and BSD Unix. In May, Apple opened the first Apple retail stores in Virginia and California. That fall, Apple released the iPod portable music player.

2003 - The iTunes Store opens up online.

2006 - At the WWDC in June, Apple announces it will integrate Intel processors into Macs.

2007 - At the Mac Expo keynote in January, Apple announces that it has dropped “Computer” from its name. Oh, yeah, and it announces the iPhone and releases the Apple TV. In May, Apple’s share price surpasses $100.

2008 - On July 11, Apple launches the App Store in iTunes, which sells apps for the iPhone and iPod touch. On December 16, Apple announces that 2009 will be its last year exhibiting at Mac Expo.

2009 - On January 14, Jobs tells Apple employees in an email that he will take a medical leave of absence through the end of June to concentrate on recovering from a hormone imbalance and try to step out of the media spotlight for a time.

1. It’s designed to make it faster and easier to get computing tasks done. This is mostly thanks to its “plain English” approach, especially compared to Windows, which has a legacy of being built by engineers for engineers and is, as a result, less intuitive for the everyday nontechnical user.

2. OS X makes it easier to find out about your computer. (For example, to find out key info about your Mac, such as which version of OS X you’re running, system specs, and so on, select Apple Menu > About This Mac. If you need to know your Mac’s IP address, go to System Preferences > Network and the info you’re looking for will appear.)

3. OS X is more secure than Windows. Yes, we know it’s because until recently, Macs were so much less common than Windows PCs that hackers didn’t bother writing viruses and malware for OS X, and there were fewer pieces of Mac software out there in which to exploit vulnerabilities. But there are more Macs out there than ever, and the number of Windows threats grows daily. To date, there are still no known widespread viruses or Trojan horse attacks aimed specifically at OS X.

4. The Mac OS is just prettier than Windows. Does that sound petty? To some, we’re sure it does, but to anyone who would mock, we say, “Stuff it.” How’s that for petty?

We’re not talking about Command-Z for undo, Command-C for copy, and Command-V for paste--although we’ve practically worn out the Z, P, and V keys, we use those combos so often, and we’re always surprised at how many people don’t know about those easy-peasy ones. No, here are the must-know, tattoo-them-on your-knuckles OS X keyboard shortcuts. And while we’re at it, here’s a quick cheat sheet for deciphering the symbols on keyboard shortcuts lists you find online or in software user manuals and pull-down menus.

GUIDE TO KEYBOARD SYMBOLS

KEY	WHAT IT DOES
⌘	Command (sometimes referred to as the “Apple key”)
⌥	Option
⇧	Shift
⌃	Control
⎋	Escape

TOP 6 HANDIEST OS X KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS

KEY COMBO	WHAT IT DOES
Command-H	Hides current app window (doesn’t work in all apps, particularly Adobe apps, which often use a different key combo for Hide, but it works in all Apple software and many other popular apps).
Command-Shift-3	Snaps a screenshot of the entire screen.
Command-Shift-4	Brings up crosshairs so you can draw a box around just the part of the screen you want to capture. (If you press Tab or Space after Command-Shift-4, then click on the window, you’ll get a clean shot of just that window, and nothing else.)
Command-Tab	Lets you tab through open applications to choose another app to switch to.
Command-Spacebar	Opens the Spotlight field without having to click its icon in the menubar.
Command-Option-Escape	Lets you force-quit a misbehaving or stalled app.

OS X’s command-line utility is called the Terminal. It can be a powerful tool for customizing the way your Mac behaves. Tinkering with the Terminal without a bit of background info isn’t advisable; heed our warnings in our “25 Terminal Tips Every Mac User Should Know” before trying out these basic commands. To launch the Terminal, go to /Applications/Utilities/Terminal, and execute by pressing Return.

FIVE TERMINAL COMMANDS EVERY MAC GEEK SHOULD KNOW

KEY	WHAT IT DOES
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type JPG	Changes the default OS X screen-capture format from PNG to JPG (you can also use GIF or PDF, if you prefer one of those formats).
defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES then execute: killall Dock	Disables the Dashboard.
diskutil secureErase freespace 3 /Volumes/name-of-drive	Securely erases data on the free space of a Mac hard drive called Macintosh HD (you would replace name-of-drive with the name of the drive you wish to erase, of course).
defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs –bool TRUE	Makes all links in Safari open as separate tabs, not separate windows.
defaults write com.apple.mail PreferPlainText –bool TRUE	Forces Mail to display all messages as plain text.

You probably didn’t know you could change these options, but you can.

Apple tried its best to give us the most useful set of icons in various iPhone menus, but there are also more ways to customize them than you might think. In the case of the icons that appear at the bottom of the screen when you tap iPod from the Home screen, you can change the default icons (Playlists, Artists, Songs, Videos) if you want to. Tap More, then tap Edit. On the resulting Configure screen, you can select an icon from the middle, hold your finger on it for a moment, and drag it down to the bottom to replace one of the defaults. If you like to separate your music collection by genre, for example, move Genres down to replace one of the defaults. Or if you’re a big audiobook listener, put Audiobooks at the bottom instead of Playlists. Tap Done when you’re through.

When a contact has two phone numbers, you’ll get your choice of which to text.

Favorites and Recents are handy for quickly placing phone calls to people in your Favorites and Recents lists, but you can also text too. If you’re not already in the phone feature, press the Home button and tap the phone icon. Tap either Favorites or Recents. To text someone in either list, tap the blue right-arrow-in-a-circle icon next to their name or number and on the Info screen tap Text Message. If a contact in your Favorites has more than one number associated with it, you’ll get a choice of which number to use for the text message.

Mac OS X uses a subsystem based on a Unix-style OS that uses permissions in its file system. Every file and folder on your hard drive has an associated set of permissions that determines who can read, write to, or execute it. Sometimes these permissions get jumbled and cause permissions errors, but there’s an easy way in Leopard to check your permissions and make necessary repairs to them. Disk utility’s Repair Disk Permissions feature verifies and—if necessary—repairs the permissions on Apple-originated files and folders, specifically Mac OS X system-related objects and Apple apps that come with OS X. Repair Disk Permissions only verifies and repairs the permissions of Apple-originated objects whose receipts are in the /Library/Receipts directory. This means that Repair Disk Permissions will not correct permissions problems in third-party software or anything in the Macintosh HD/Users folder, such as your Home folder and its contents.

The permissions repair process may take a few minutes. When it’s done you’ll get a report that might look a little like this.

To repair permissions, go to /Applications/Utilities and launch Disk Utility. Under the First Aid tab, select your hard drive on the left and click Repair Disk Permissions.

Get the full 411 on your Mac with two clicks.

Super Mac geeks may scoff at this, but anyone who’s never needed to find this on a Mac--especially switchers who might have tried to uncover this info on their Windows PC to no avail—will be delighted how easy it is. To find out what version of OS X you’re running, as well as your Mac’s processor speed, amount and type of RAM, simply go to Apple > About This Mac.

Spotlight is even smarter in Leopard than you thought! It can solve math problems too.

Attention, all English majors! The Calculator isn’t the fastest way your Mac can do basic math for you. If you waste time hunting for the Calculator in /Applications/Utilities, or even if you finally put the Calculator in your Dock, you needn’t have because Spotlight can do calculations for you, as long as you have OS X Leopard. All you need to remember is that * is multiplication, / (forward slash) is division, and + and – mean what they should. The next time you need to know what 589 + 785 is, press Command-Space to bring up Spotlight, type 589 + 785, and press Return.

The Finder has a lot going for it, especially compared to Explorer in Windows. But we find Finder’s quick-and-dirty key commands the most useful, particularly Command-I, which, when pressed when a file or app in the Finder is highlighted, brings up the Inspector and shows you all the gory details, including the file or app’s type, size, where it’s saved on your hard drive, when it was created and last modified, and so on. If you’re looking at a list of files, you can also right-click the file name and choose Get Info. To bring up the Inspector in Quick Look, type Command-Option-I.

Acrobat Pro is a powerful tool, but you don’t need to spend $449 to own your own copy, since creating a PDF of any file is built right in to OS X.

Switchers will love this one: In OS X Leopard, making a PDF out of any document doesn’t require Adobe Acrobat. All you need to do is open the file you want to PDF and choose File > Print (or Command-P). In the printer field, click the up/down arrow to the right and select Adobe PDF.

A short, sweet dock is a beautiful thing. Note that your alias folder Dock item will take on the icon of the first item in the list, in our case, it’s Adium.

It’s best to leave applications in the Applications folder and generally use Mac OS X’s built-in organization, rather than moving apps around so you can open them from, say, your Desktop—that’s what the Dock’s for, after all. But you can still keep most-used apps and files accessible by creating a folder of aliases and stashing it in your Dock. On your Desktop, create a new folder by right-clicking and choosing New Folder, or by pressing Shift-Command-N. Give it a name; we’re calling ours Most Used. Go to the place on your hard drive where your frequently used apps and docs live. For apps, that’s obviously the Applications folder. Find your most-used apps in the list and right-click each, then select Make Alias. The alias will appear directly below the original app. Drag the alias from the Finder window to the alias folder you created on your desktop. Do the same with frequently used files. When you’re done, drag your aliases folder onto your Dock (to the right of the separator between app icons and the Trash). Now if you really want to get tricky, you can remove all of the duplicates in your Dock (by dragging each one off or right-clicking each one and choosing Remove from Dock), leaving just your alias folder and anything else that’s there by default (open apps most likely)—freeing up a nice chunk of Dock real estate (see also #20, “the Dock Is Cool, But It Ain’t Perfect,” for more Dock customization tips).

It looks like a bunch of gobbledygook to normal people, but your IT dude could find some dirty laundry lurking here, unless you purge Safari’s cache in the Terminal.

If you think that checking Private Browsing in Safari’s preferences actually keeps the websites you visit private, think again. Anyone--your boss or IT guy included--can see exactly where you’re surfing by executing the following Terminal command: dscacheutil -cachedump -entries Host

To purge Safari’s cache for real, execute this Terminal command: dscacheutil -flushcache

Other World Computing makes beefing up your Mac’s memory as easy as possible—just short of bringing you a cold beer after you’re done, to toast your Mac’s new memory bump. Most fairly recent Macs—except the MacBook Air, whose RAM is soldered to the motherboard—make it easy to add more RAM yourself. And OWC has how-to tutorials and videos to get you going—as well as some of the most affordable prices on Mac memory that we’ve found.

Here we present the steps for adding more RAM to an Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro with only 2GB of RAM, but OWC sells RAM for many Mac models and provides DIY installation info, including video how-tos in some cases—on its site at www.macsales
.com/memory. There are also excellent DIY upgrade resources at www.everymac.com.

To install more RAM in an Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro, you will need a #0 magnetized Phillips screwdriver, a non-marring work surface (spreading a clean towel on a desk or table works fine), and a tool called a spudger or, in Apple parlance, a “black stick”; these are available for $2.95 at iFixit. Most RAM installation manuals will tell you to also use an ESD wrist strap or mat to avoid damaging sensitive internal components with electrostatic charges, but you can touch any metal, grounded appliance while it’s plugged in to remove any static electricity in your fingers before getting started.

FOLLOW THESE STEPS:

Grab your specs. Those are some tiny screws.

1. If you’ve used the notebook recently and it’s still warm, let it cool down before you get started. Remove the MacBook Pro’s battery and turn the machine over so the battery side is face up. Remove the three screws from the memory door.

Here’s what RAM looks like.

2. Remove the memory door to expose the existing memory modules.

Use your thumbs to spread the tiny metal tabs to remove the RAM.

3. To remove each memory module, carefully spread the two locking tabs for the slot (top or bottom) away from the card on both sides and allow the card to pop up slightly.

4. Pull the card straight back and out of the memory slot

Slide the new RAM in until it clicks.

5. To install a memory card, insert the card at a 25-degree angle behind the locking tabs of the top slot. Firmly push the card straight into the slot until it is fully and securely seated along its length. If the back of the card drops down before it is fully seated, raise it up enough to push it fully into the slot.

NOTE: If installing two cards, install into the bottom slot first. When finished installing memory into the bottom slot, use your spudger, leveraged against the frame to push the back of the card toward the slot, to verify that the card is firmly seated. Align the notch in the memory card with the tooth in the slot before inserting.

6. When the card is fully seated, push it straight down until the tabs click onto both sides of the card, locking it into place.

You’ll hear a click when you slide in the RAM, but use your black stick to be sure it’s in.

7. To ensure that the memory cards are seated securely, for the lower card, use a black stick leveraged against the frame to evenly push along the back of the card.

When your iPhone or iPod touch crashes or locks up, you need to reset it. To do this it, hold the Sleep/Wake button at the top right of the device and the Home button at the same time. Hold both buttons until you see the screen go black and the white Apple logo appear. When this happens, you can let go: The device is rebooting.

To reset an iPod with a clickwheel, press and hold the Menu and center buttons at the same time until the Apple logo appears, usually in 6 to 8 seconds.

You can return to a saved email draft on your iPhone at your leisure--just as you can in Mail on your Mac.

To save a message as a draft that you can come back to later for revisions or to send once you return to a Wi-Fi or 3G zone, tap Cancel as you’re drafting the email. Then tap Save. After a few minutes, you will be able to locate the message in a Drafts folder.

Once Apple’s syncing service worked through its kinks, it turned out to be quite reliable—and useful for keeping all of your info synced across your computers, iPhones, and so on. But if $99 a year seems like a lot to pay, check it out on Amazon.com, where it sells for $79.99. If you’re comfortable buying on eBay, there are amazing MobileMe discounts to be had. We found NIB (new in box) individual-user copies for as low as $45 and family Packs for as low as $74.99 (it normally costs $149).

Ah, the geekiest of Mac geek knowledge—how to play a game in OS X’s text-only command-line utility. But, yes, it’s possible. Here’s how:

1. Launch Terminal.
2. Type emacs and press Return.
3. Press Escape, then type x.
4. Type tetris. That’s all there is to it.

OK, the graphics won’t impress, but if you’re really hurting for something to do…

Go to System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver and under the Desktop tab, select Pictures, then check Change picture and select your desired interval.

Most Leopard users have their favorite Desktop backgrounds. Steve Jobs seemed to always prefer the Dew Drop image, while Phil Schiller rocked Aurora during his first keynote. But you don’t have to limit yourself to just one—and you don’t have to stick to Apple’s provided images. We like to use our Desktop as a kind of digital picture frame/slide show by setting our Desktop & Screen Saver System Preference to look in our Pictures folder and cycle through the images therein.

Here’s how to optimize Leopard’s Dock to save time and take better advantage of Leopard’s Stacks feature.

To tell the Dock to only show certain items in the Recent Items stack, Control-click it and choose your poison.

ADD A RECENT ITEMS STACK

This stack comes in handy if you work in certain apps or docs in extended spurts rather than daily.

1. Fire up the Terminal.

2. Type defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add ‘{ “tile-data” = { “list-type” = 1; }; “tile-type” = “recents-tile”; }’ and press Return. Type killall Dock and press Return.

3. When the Dock restarts, Control-click the Recents stack and select what you want.

Can you see me now? Zoom in to get a closer look at Dock icons by pressing Control-Shift.

GET A CLOSER LOOK AT DOCK ICONS

You already know that you can set the dock magnification in System Preferences > Dock, but if you normally keep your Dock icons pretty small to avoid eating up screen real estate, you can magnify them on the fly by pressing Shift-Control while mousing over them.

One of Adium’s handiest features is the transcript viewer, which lets you view transcripts from all of your recent chats--especially handy for documenting business communications via IM.

ADIUM

The only thing iChat beats Adium on, in terms of features, is its ability to do both audio and video chat, in addition to text chat. That said, Adium kicks iChat’s booty by offering the following features that iChat lacks or lags on:

>   Ability to log in to multiple IM accounts (AIM, GoogleTalk, Yahoo, and so on) simultaneously.

>   More flexible status management.

>   Much more customizable interface.

>   Growl support (Growl lets Mac OS X applications unobtrusively notify you when certain events occur; see
growl.info for details).

If you click the small arrow to the left of Firefox’s Search field, you can choose which search sites will appear by selecting the ones you want from the list or viewing more choices by clicking Get More Search Engines.

FIREFOX 3

Safari is OK as browsers go...but OK doesn’t cut it for Web browsers these days, considering how much time the average person spends online. Here are the reasons we cite when we go to the mat for Firefox over Safari:

>   ADD-ONS: Our favorite Firefox add-ons are Read It Later, LeechBlock, Delicious, and Toodledo, just to name a few. Go to Tools > Add-Ons and click Get Add-ons to discover your own must-haves.

>   BETTER SEARCHING: Sure, Safari has the Google search box up in the toolbar, but Firefox’s seemingly identical search box is a lot more powerful. Click the tiny arrow next to the Google icon to search other sites instead—Wikipedia, Amazon, IMDb, and tons more. Click Manage Search Engines to customize the list.

>   BETTER BOOKMARKING: Safari lets you name your bookmarks and decide where to keep them. Firefox lets you do that, plus add tags, keywords, and descriptions to help you find your bookmarks quickly or even launch them by just typing the keyword into the address bar.

>   SMART ADDRESS BAR: When you type something in Firefox’s Smart Address Bar, the app generates a list of possible results based on your history and bookmarks, and you can use the arrows to select one and press Return to launch it. This keeps you from having to click on your Bookmarks or History list to find sites.

>   MASTER PASSWORD: This keeps your saved passwords under another layer of security by requiring you to enter a master password once per session. Find it in Firefox > Preferences > Security > Use A Master Password.

Since Safari and Firefox both support FTP, you might just be tempted to upload and download files from your own FTP server using your browser of choice. To that we say, “Don’t do it!” FTP file transfers are much more reliable using a dedicated FTP app. There are a variety of freeware and shareware FTP apps for the Mac, but we’ve always been partial to Cyberduck. And now the smarties over at MacTips.org (www.mactips.org) have confirmed our choice by offering several reasons Cyberduck rocks:

> You can upload files to your FTP server via a handy Dashboard widget.

> Cyberduck has AppleScript support.

> In Preferences> Bandwidth, you can set the maximum bandwidth Cyberduck can use at any time. You can also limit bandwidth at the transfer level by pressing Command-T and limit the maximum number of connections to your FTP server in Preferences > Connection.

> Cyberduck lets you to edit a text file remotely as if it were stored on your local disk. Just Control-Click the file, select Edit With, then choose your text editor.

For more reasons to use Cyberduck, see Mactips.

We’re cheapskates—or should we say, careful with our money? We present two affordable ways to create ringtones for your iPhone with songs that are already in your iTunes library. The first uses GarageBand ‘09, which you might have on your Mac if you bought it very recently, as part of the iLife creativity suite. The second requires QuickTime Pro.

MAKE A RINGTONE IN GARAGEBAND ‘09

1. Be sure you have a song that is not protected by DRM (digital rights management) that you can use for your ringtone. The easiest way to do this is to import a song from a music CD into iTunes by inserting the disc into your Mac’s optical drive and clicking Import when iTunes asks if you’d like to import it. If you really want to use a DRM-protected song you bought from the iTunes store, you can burn it to a CD as an audio file in iTunes (create a playlist by pressing Command-N and dragging it to the new playlist, select the playlist and then click Burn Disc). You can do this in fewer steps using Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack Pro ($32).

The icon to the left of the LCD in the bottom center is the metronome. Change its units of measure to Time by clicking it and selecting Time.

2. Launch GarageBand and press Command-N to create a new project. Select iPhone Ringtone in the sidebar of the new file dialog, click Choose, and name your ringtone. To get your desired song file into the project window, click the Media Browser icon in the bottom-right of the GarageBand window to view your iTunes library. Select the song you just imported from a CD and drag it to the project window. Or, if you’re using an iTunes song that you burned to a disc, put the disc into your CD drive, double-click the CD icon on your Desktop and drag the song from the Finder onto the center portion of the GarageBand workspace. Change the ruler display at the top to show seconds by clicking the metronome icon in the LCD at the bottom and choose Time from the pop-up options. This will make it easier to see where you want to start and stop your ringtone, which can be no longer than 40 seconds.

We only made the cycle region for Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” 23 seconds because we just wanted that much of the song.

3. To create a cycle region that’s no longer than 40 seconds, drag the length of the yellow ruler at the top, so it’s shorter than 40 seconds. To make it easier to see that far to the right, click the eye icon in the lower-right to hide the loops and media viewers. Click the |< icon (back-to-the-beginning button) to go to the beginning of the song and listen to it, so you can tell if you like how the cycle region falls. If not, make adjustments as necessary. To start the ringtone in the middle of the song, position the mouse at the beginning of the loop (far left) until you see an icon that looks like a left arrow and a right arrow with an open bracket in the middle. Click and drag to “cut” the song, so it starts where you want it to (it helps to move the playhead to that point, so you can use the red line as a guide for where to stop dragging). Press Play to listen to it to make sure you like how it falls. If you cut off too much, press Command–Z and start over.

4. When you’re happy with your ringtone, save it and choose Share > Send Ringtone to iTunes. Once it’s done converting, iTunes will launch and start playing your new ringtone. Sync your iPhone with iTunes to get the ringtone onto your phone.

MAKE A RINGTONE IN QUICKTIME PRO

It costs $29.99 to upgrade to QuickTime Pro from the free QuickTime Player (www.apple.com/quicktime), but you can accomplish the same results for free using Audacity (audacity.sourceforge.net).

1. In QuickTime Pro, go to File > Open and pick an audio file. As with GarageBand, don’t use a DRM-protected audio file.

2. Slide the sliders (below the line that shows your track’s progress) around the section of the audio you want to use as your ringtone. This isn’t as precise as doing it in GarageBand—it can help to make the QuickTime Player window really, really wide, so you get a little finer control.

3. When you’ve got your 30 seconds or so of music selected, press Command-C or go to Edit > Copy to copy that section to the clipboard. Press Command-N or go to File > New Player to open a new QuickTime window and press Command-V to paste in your audio clip.

The key to converting your selection to the proper ringtone format is to save it as an .m4r file.

4. Press Command-E (or go to File > Export) to export the file to your Desktop as RINGTONE-NAME.m4r, replacing RINGTONE-NAME with whatever you want to call it.

5. Double-click your new ringtone in the Finder to import it to iTunes, and then sync it to your phone.

If your Command-H trigger fingers are getting sore from all that window hiding--or if you’re just stuck with too many apps and docs to work with and too small a monitor, you can set the Dock to hide all windows except the app window you want by executing this Terminal command: defaults write com.apple.dock single-app -bool TRUE. Press Return, then type killall Dock.

Now every time you click an app icon in the Dock, it will open the most recent window used in that app and hide all other windows until you call them forth. The other way to accomplish this is to press Command-Option while clicking an app icon in the Dock.

Can’t recall what key presses do what on your Mac? The Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts System Preference reveals all.

We provided a short list of our favorite OS X shortcuts earlier, but you can totally personalize the key combos on your Mac if you want. Go to System Prefs > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts.

This System Preference is also useful for learning the existing shortcuts, as well as changing the ones you don’t use to something more memorable.

You get to choose what your keyboard modifiers do.

If you’re an accidental Caps Lock presser, you can disable that key to prevent yourself from accidentally turning it on as you type (Go to System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard > Modifier Keys and set No Action For Caps Lock). In fact, you can disable or change the action of all the modifier keys--Control, Option, Command, and so on. If you’ve recently switched from a Windows PC to a Mac, you might want to disable the Control key, for example, until you get used to pressing Command instead--or you could change the Control key’s action to Command.

Out of the box, many of the multitouch gestures available on new trackpads built into the MacBook Air and the unibody MacBooks and MacBook Pros will only work with a limited number of applications. You can add this functionality to many more apps with help from MultiClutch (donationware).

Imagine changing tabs in Firefox with a three-finger swipe to the left. Or launching the spell checker in Mail or Microsoft Word with a three-finger swipe to the right. Or raising the volume of iTunes with a two-finger rotate to the right. Or zooming in on your photos in older versions of Photoshop with an outward pinch of your fingers. You get the idea. You’re going to love MultiClutch.

Relaunching the Finder comes in handy when a force-quit or some other gremlin hangs up your machine to the point where it just won’t budge. To do this, press, Option-Control-click on the Finder icon in the Dock, then choose Relaunch. Or just Option-right-click on the Finder icon if you have a two-button mouse.

Big Brother is always watching, but we can’t figure out why Apple insists on stamping each song we buy from the iTunes store with your name and email address. If that gives you the heebie-jeebies, you can strip that data—which, by the way, is only accessible with a bit of Terminal know-how—using a freebie app called Privatunes.

If you’ve got just a single Ethernet cable attached to one Mac and multiple Macs in your home or office, you can all get online if you share your Internet connection via the built-in AirPort card (MacBooks, late-model iMacs, and certain Mac Pros have this; Go to Apple > About This Mac to determine if your Mac’s got built-in AirPort. Go to System Preferences > Sharing. Select Internet Sharing. Change your options to share from Ethernet in the drop-down list and then click AirPort in the “To Computers Using” box. Click AirPort options to give your network a name and password. When you have everything the way you like it, turn Internet sharing on.

If you use the Apple Remote and have more than one Mac in a room, you can inadvertently control both Macs at once.

The fix is to pair your Apple Remote to just one Mac, so it will only control one machine. On the Mac you want to control, Go to System Preferences > Security > General. Click the Pair button. Now hold the remote a few inches from the IR port on your computer. On the remote, hold down the Menu and Next buttons at the same time. The computer will display the paired-remote graphic when it’s done pairing.

Mozy.com (free for up to 2GB) and Dropbox (free for up to 2GB) are two options for backing up your files online instead of to an external drive. If you use MobileMe, you can even have the included Backup app archive important files to your iDisk--just not anything too large, since your iDisk storage tops out at 20GB. (You can upgrade to 40GB for $49 a year or 60GB for $99 a year.)

Productivity whiz Merlin Mann--a true Mac geek--uses Path Finder ($39.95) instead of the Finder. It works like the Finder, but with more features: drawers for information about volumes and files, a handy Drop Stack area for corralling files, plus a built-in Terminal emulator, text editor, PDF viewer, and image converter.

Zapping your PRAM (parameter RAM) erases settings stored by the internal battery.

1. Shut down the computer, and locate the Command, Option, P, and R keys on the keyboard. We’re not being cheeky, but we want you to be prepared because you’ll need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 3.

2. Turn on the computer.

3. Press and hold Command-Option-P-R. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.

4. Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time, then release the keys.

Let your feet do the walking after your fingers do the clicking.

In case you hadn’t noticed, Google Maps now offers biking or walking directions to a destination. In major cities, you can even get directions for taking public transit. To hoof it, in Google Maps, just click Walking when your directions come up. Mother Earth thanks you, by the way!

Sometimes it takes awhile for new podcasts to show up in the iTunes store. If you come across one you’d like to subscribe to, you can still subscribe even if it’s not yet on offer in the store. Copy the podcast feed to your clipboard (from a blog or whatever site you found it on). In iTunes, choose Advanced > Subscribe To Podcast, then paste in the podcast link.

You could use FileVault to store your top-secret data files, but there’s no need to bog down your system--FileVault is notoriously sluggish--when you can accomplish the same ends for specific files, such as tax returns, home-inventory lists, wedding vows, or anything else you want to keep under virtual lock and key. For these types of files, we like to create encrypted disk images (.dmg files), which is easy to do in Disk Utility.

1. Launch Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities).

2. Choose File > New > Blank Disk Image and enter a name for your disk image in the Save As field. This name is used for the disk image (.dmg) file. Note the location specified in the Where pop-up menu. If you want to save the image file in a different location, change it.

3. Select a size for the image file from the Size pop-up menu. Choose a size appropriate for the disk’s needs. You can always create another one later if you need more space.

4. Choose 128-bit AES encryption from the Encryption drop-down.

5. Choose read/write disk image from the Image Format drop-down.

6. Click Create.

When you select a password for your disk image, Disk Utility tells you what it thinks of the password’s strength—that is, its crackability.

7. Enter and verify a good password in the dialog window that appears. This password will be saved in your Keychain by default, or you can deselect “Remember password (add to Keychain)” if you don’t want that.

8. Click OK.

Ever tried tapping “xoxo” to the end of a text to your BFF on the iPhone? You’ll notice the phone’s auto-correct feature selects “so” for the first “xo.” To keep the iPhone from trying to auto-correct any word, just add an extra letter or two, so it looks like a word that doesn’t exist—this will, in most cases, confuse it to the point where it won’t try to guess what you’re trying to say. Of course, remember that this workaround does not help the iPhone ”learn” words you use most, which is supposed to help you type faster.

Are you bugged by those bouncing Dock icons when an app wants to get your attention? You can Turn off that behavior for good with two simple Terminal commands:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-bouncing -bool TRUE

Press Return.

Type: killall Dock

If you don’t have an Intel Mac, you could also try Unsanity’s Dock Detox (free,).

And if you decide you want the bouncing back after you’ve run the above Terminal command, you can reverse it by executing: defaults write com.apple.dock no-bouncing -bool FALSE. Press Return. Type: killall Dock.

Filter any non-music items in your iTunes library by setting up a new music-only Smart Playlist.

If you’ve never played with Smart Playlists in iTunes, you’ll be delighted to discover that “smart” is no misnomer. Our two favorite ways to use Smart Playlists are for creating them on the fly just by clicking a few parameters. They save time by not forcing you to manually create playlists--and they let you filter out a variety of media that iTunes can track and keep updated, no matter how large your iTunes library gets.

The smartest Smart Playlists of all is one that contains only music. We’re sure that there’s way more than music in your iTunes library, and if you listen to music wearing headphones throughout the workday, creating a music-only Smart Playlist saves you fiddling with iTunes when you should be, well, working.

Your ears will thank you for keeping the tunes fresh.

To create a music-only Smart Playlist, press Option-Command-N or go to File > New Smart Playlist. Check the box next to “Match the following rules.” Now set up the “rules” governing your Smart Playlist by selecting a variety of characteristics that will filter just music into the playlist. For example, you want to eliminate podcasts, audiobooks, and movies, and you might even need to weed out a few specialized playlists or genres. After adding each new rule, click the plus symbol to add a new blank one. When you’re satisfied, check Live Updating, click OK, and name your new Smart Playlist in the sidebar.

Another cool Smart Playlist helps you keep your music selection fresh. All you do is create a new Smart Playlist and next to Last Played, set it to “is not in the last 1 weeks.”

iTunes is a smarter multitasker and media organizer than you might realize. It can help you manage all the PDFs on your Mac, with a few minutes of prep work on your part.

First, create a new iTunes library (launch iTunes while holding the Option key, then click Create Library) and get rid of all the music-related things. That includes deleting the default playlists iTunes creates and customizing the library display by removing the columns that are no longer pertinent. Just right-click in the column header and uncheck the label. Go to iTunes > Preferences and uncheck “Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library” under the Advanced tab. That will leave the files where they are now rather than creating another copy of them in the ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music folder. While you’re at it, uncheck the display options under the General tab and check the Disable options under the Parental Control tab. That will eliminate the unnecessary options on the screen.

Now you’re ready to add PDF files to the library. Choose File > Add To Library, then Option-select your PDF files. Just like music tracks, they’ll show up in the iTunes library sorted alphabetically by name. It’s best to tag each file right when you add it to your Mac. One obvious way to tag a file is using the Genre column. Press Command-I (or right-click a file and select Get Info) and add your own description in the Genre field. We used the Genre field as a metatag (“Checks” or “Statements,” for example) and put additional description in the Comment field. There are no limits on how to reassign the fields in the Get Info window.

Now you have to choose between Smart Playlists and user-defined playlists. If you add good metadata to each file, the Smart Playlist is the logical choice. If you don’t feel like adding a lot of tags to your files, then create your own playlists and manually add files.

If you’re in the habit of using acronyms and abbreviations in emails and text messages on the iPhone, you might have noticed that it’s a bit of a pain on the iPhone’s keyboard since Shift only activates caps on one letter, then switches off. The solution is to enable Caps Lock in your iPhone’s Settings (Settings > General > Keyboard > Enable Caps Lock). Now, when you’re in the keyboard, you can double-tap the Shift key, it will turn blue, and caps lock stays on until you tap the Shift key again to turn it off...you know, just FYI.

You can use the Terminal command SSH to open a secure connection to another Mac pretty easily. Best of all, via SSH, it’s free, whereas Apple charges $499 for Apple Remote Desktop, its desktop management app.

First make sure that SSH log-ins are enabled on the remote Mac by opening System Preferences > Sharing. Check the box next to Remote Login, and the SSH service will activate.

To connect to that remote computer via SSH, open the Terminal on the local machine and execute this command: ssh -l username remote-address. Replace username with your username on the remote Mac and remote-address with the remote Mac’s IP address. (The remote IP address is listed in the remote machine’s Sharing pane when you click on Remote Login.) Press Return, and enter the remote username’s password at the prompt. SSH will connect you to the remote machine. (If you’re asked to add the remote machine to a list of known hosts, type Y for yes.)

Once you’re connected, you can execute any Terminal command remotely. Try this one, just for fun: say “Ouch. Don’t press the keys so hard.” This is especially amusing if you’re executing the remote command on a Mac in a nearby room, so you can witness the user’s reaction to the Mac “talking.”

Set the iPhone’s timer for however long you think you’ll need to drift off to dreamland, then choose Sleep iPod as the timer action, instead of a ringtone.

Obviously, you won’t apply this tip if you’re driving. But if you’re taking a long plane, train, or car ride and want your iPod to play for a set time so you can take a snooze--without taxing the phone’s battery after you’re snoring away--you can use the phone’s timer so that your music plays until the timer is up. Tap the Clock icon on the Home screen, tap Timer, and then tap When Timer Ends to see your choices. The first item on the list is Sleep iPod. Tap Set. Also remember: The iPhone’s timer is truly handy...it can help you remember to switch your laundry, take a roast out of the oven, or anything else that you’d use a kitchen timer for.

Tell your iPhone where you want to go with a double-press of the Home button.

It’s a wonder our iPhones’ Home buttons haven’t worn out from so much pressing--and here’s another trick that will get that button even more use: To set up your iPhone to go directly to a certain function menu with a double-press, tap Settings > General > Home Button. If you haven’t changed this setting, the default for a double-press on Home is to go to the Home screen, but you can change it to go to your iPhone Favorites or the iPod instead. You can also turn iPod Controls on or off here--If you select On, double-pressing Home while the iPod is playing media displays the iPod controls.

If you can’t get your machine to start at all—not even in Safe Mode—and you don’t have your system disk handy, you can start up in single-user mode and use fsck to set things right. fsck is a command-line utility similar to Disk Utility.

Reboot your Mac while holding down Command-S.

At the command-line prompt type: /sbin/fsck –fy. After fsck does its Unix magic you will see one of the following messages: ** The volume (name_of_volume) appears to be OK. If you see that, you’re golden. Or you might see: ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****. If you see that, you need to run fsck repeatedly until you see the first message.

When you’re finished, at the command-line prompt, type: reboot.

Your Mac will restart now.

Trouble starting up? If your Mac won’t start up, try using Safe Boot. Safe Boot loads your Mac into Safe Mode and runs a series of utilities during startup.

Start up in Safe Mode by holding down the Shift key when you start or restart. After you’ve started your machine successfully, restart the machine in normal mode. Safe Mode disables many OS X features and shouldn’t be used for anything other than troubleshooting.

Introduced in OS X Tiger, Automator is like a personal assistant for busy Mac users. The standalone app, found in the Applications folder, can light a fire under your productivity by, well, automating certain repetitive tasks in most Mac apps. One smart way to get started with Automator is to locate freeware and shareware Automator actions on the Internet and download them. Google automator actions or go to Apple’s site to download them at www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/automator/.

Now, if you want to start by creating a very simple Automator action, try this. It’s an action we use to resize multiple images for posting on the Web or emailing. This action uses a combination of tasks in Finder and Preview to open images you have selected in a Finder window, copy them to a folder called Scaled Images, leaving the originals untouched, scaling each image so it’s 480 pixels wide and saving each scaled image with “_scaled” added to the end of its filename. Here’s how to build this workflow in Automator.

Sure, it’s only a four-step workflow, but our custom Scale Images action saves us hours every week.

1. Launch Automator. Select Files & Folders when asked to select a starting point to open a new workflow.

2. In the far left-hand (Actions) pane of the Automator window, under Library, select Files & Folders.

3. Select Get Selected Finder Items and drag it to the workflow area (where it says “Drag actions or files here to create your workflow”). This becomes Step 1 of your workflow.

4. Select Copy Finder Items from the right side of the Actions pane and drag it to the workflow area below step 1.

5. Since you want to copy the files as they are to a new folder on your Desktop called Scaled Images, under Copy Finder Items To, click the down arrow and select Other. Make sure Desktop is selected at the top of the Open dialog, click New Folder and create a folder called Scaled Images. Select that folder and click Open. Now step 2 in your workflow should say Copy Finder Items to Scaled Images.

6. Now is where the fun begins—can’t you feel it? On the left side of the Actions pane, select Photos, then look for the Preview icon on the right, followed by the words “Scale Images.” Select this and drag it to the workflow pane as step 3 of your workflow.

7. On the left side of the Actions pane, select Files & Folders again and then drag Rename Finder Items to the bottom of the workflow pane. A dialog pops up warning you that this action will change the names of the Finder items passed into it (duh), but you don’t want two copies of each file, so click Don’t Add. Rename Finder Items becomes step 4 of your workflow, but you’re not quite finished.

8. To add “_scaled” to the end of each scaled image’s file name, click the down arrow next to Add Date or Time and select Add Text. In the add field type _scaled and keep “after name” selected to the right. Finally, to test the workflow, open a Finder window with some images in it, select them, and in Automator, click Run. If the workflow runs smoothly, you can save it for future use. The easiest way to save a new Automator action is to save it as an application: File > Save As > Application, then name it. For fastest access, we plopped our Scale Images action into the Dock. Now whenever we have a group of images to scale for posting online, we just select them in a Finder window and drag them to that icon in the Dock. Alternatively, you can also save the Automator action as a Finder plug-in, so it can be accessed by right-clicking on a selection. To do this, choose File > Save As Plug-in.

True Mac geeks rely on a cadre of third-party apps for customizing OS X and working smarter and faster. Here are our essentials, no matter what kind of Mac geek you are. In our case, we use them all.

FOR PRODUCTIVITY GEEKS: Quicksilver (free beta)

FOR AUDIO GEEKS: Audio Hijack Pro ($32)

FOR MENU GEEKS: FruitMenu ($12)

FOR ICON GEEKS: CandyBar ($29)

FOR BACKUP GEEKS: Déjà Vu ($24.95)

FOR CLEAN-DESKTOP GEEKS: DragThing ($29)

There are some things you just can’t take back, like spilling a mug of hot tea on your Mac’s keyboard. But even these kinds of disasters usually have straightforward solutions—as long as you keep your wits about you. In the case of a Mac keyboard or an iPhone taking a soaking, for example, fast, calm reaction is what will save your bacon. For solutions to these and 17 major Mac and iPhone/iPod disasters, see www.maclife.com/article/feature/how_survive_17_worst_mac_disasters.

If you get bored by Terminal Tetris, you can play Snake instead.

Execute this Terminal command: emacs

Press Return, then press Escape-X.

At the prompt type: Snake.

Press Return.

Your goal is to eat the red rectangles while avoiding the walls.

20 Helpful iLife '09 Tips and Tricks

Roberto Baldwin — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 06:07:14 -0600

Every year Apple rolls out another version of iLife. While iPhoto and GarageBand got major updates, some apps, like iWeb and iDVD, ended up being nearly forgotten about. Still, with updates come new features to figure out and a navigation that's changed ever so slightly.

We dived right into the new suite and came up with 20 tips and tricks that we hope will help you enjoy all the features the new iLife '09 has to offer.

iPhoto

1. Add geo-tagging info to your uploaded photos - By default, iPhoto doesn't upload photos with location information to online sites. To share your location with the world, open the iPhoto preferences, choose Web and click on "include location information for published photos."

2. See only photos that haven't been imported - If you store images on your iPhone, but want them to be imported into iPhoto, you can show only the photos that need to be imported by checking the "Hide photos already imported box."

3. The more you tag, the smarter iPhoto gets - Find a group of images with a certain person. As you tag the images, iPhoto will learn their face and will eventually ask if if they are the person you're looking for. No word if iPhoto will help you find the droids you are looking for.

4. Multiple people in Faces - You can tag multiple people in a photo. Click on Faces and iPhoto will attempt to find all the faces. You can tag faces already found, then click on "add missing face" to create new face boxes. Adjust the size of the box, click done and add the name.

5. Hide photos - Got photos you want to keep, but they might be NSFW, or you have photos are just cluttering up an event. Use the Hide feature to make those photos disappear without deleting them. Select a photo you want to hide and cick on the red X Hide button. You can show all your hidden photos, select View>Hidden Photos in the menu bar.

6. Zoom in and out - Double left clicking zooms in to the map in iPhoto. Double right clicking zooms out. You can also use the slider in the lower right-hand corner.

7. Use Faces for animals - While not an official feature in iPhoto, we were able to get iPhoto to recognize the differences between two cats and train the app to recognize their faces.

8. Moving Faces on the Corkboard -Be careful when moving faces around on the Corkboard. You can accidentally drop a person onto another person. It will erase your tags you've added to that person. A quick cmd-z will reverse the problem.

9. Change a person's Faces Key Photo - Open a person's images in Faces. Right click on the image you want to be the key photo and choose "Make Key Photo" An easier method, drag your mouse over the key photo in the corkboard view and while the photos are changing, tap the space bar on the photo you would like to be the key photo, violá!

10. Empty the trash - The trash is usually filled with photos you don't want, empty it for more space. Right click and delete those lame photos.

Tips for GarageBand, iMove and iWeb are waiting for you on the next page.

GarageBand

1. Make sure your Mac can hear your Guitar -By default, GarageBand is setup for a guitar to be connected to the program. If you're taking a lesson and need to tune your acoustic guitar, click on Setup>My Input Device> and choose Internal Mic.

2. Screensaver? No problem - If you're concerned about your Screen Saver or Energy Saver preferences messing with your guitar lesson, don't be. GarageBand takes that into account and disables both when you are taking a lesson.

3. Artists got bills to pay - If you plan on purchasing GarageBand so you can be taught by Sting how to play Roxanne, be warned. Artist Lessons will set you back $4.99. It's still cheaper than having Ben Folds show up at your house with a grand piano.

4. Easier Ringtones - GarageBand has ringtone template now. To make a ringtone from an MP3, or unprotected AAC file, choose the oddly named "Example Ringtone" from the iPhone Ringtone selections in the GarageBand splash screen. Delete the jingle Apple has in the time line, click on the media browser and drag your song of choice to the timeline. Adjust the cycle region to your liking, choose Share>Send Ringtone to iTunes from the menu bar and you're ready to rock out with each incoming call.

5. Scoring notes - To write a score with real notes, instead of fumbling around with the keyboard to play virtual instrument, can be a bit confusing at first. Select a virtual instrument track, in the time line cmd-click where you would like to place your notes. Double click on the box you've created an the drawer with the Score Option should appear. Now cmd-click on the score to add notes.

6. Better search - When looking for the perfect song in your iTunes library, the Media Browser helps you narrow you choices down. By clicking on the magnifying glass in the search field you can search by, Artist, Song, Composer, and album.

iMovie

1. Image stabilization takes a long time - Stabilize all your clips when you're done with everything else. That way you can go for a walk or grab quick lunch.

2. Media in other places - Right click the in the Event Library to find videos stored on other drives, or in other parts of your Macs drive.

3. 500 miles and counting - When using the travel globes, try and make the minimum distance at least 500 miles. Anything less looks really lame.

iWeb

1. Facebook notification - Keep your friends in the loop with Facebook notifications that your site has been updated. When you publish your site for the first time after upgrading, you get the option to link your Facebook account.

iLife '09 Video Tour

Roberto Baldwin & Mike DeLano — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 23:10:37 -0600

The nice folks at the Apple booth gave us a quick run through of iLife '09. They ran us through a few of the new features in GarageBand, iPhoto and iMovie.

The iLife '09 suite will be available at the end of January.

Check out the iLife '09 specs.