Guides & How-Tos

Tutorial: Preferences Files: The Complete Story

Ted Landau

Of all the "under the hood" components of Mac OS X, my personal favorite is preferences files. Why? For starters, they are important. They potentially affect every application you use, from the Finder to obscure utilities. Second, there are significant and well-defined troubleshooting issues regarding preferences files, that every user should know about. Third, there are the numerous "hidden" preferences settings that unlock useful and sometimes "fun" features of applications that you would otherwise never know about. And finally, compared to the intricacies of UNIX, preferences files are a fairly easy component … Read more

Tutorial: Maintaining and restoring your PowerBook/iBook battery

PowerBook and iBook batteries, like all other lithium-ion charge carrying devices, have a limited life-span. After several months to a few years of use (dependent on the number of power cycles), the batteries will start carrying a smaller charge, causing the PowerBooks' usage time to dissipate quickly when not connected to external power.

Eventually, you may find that your two to three year old PowerBook/iBook lasts for an hour or less -- in some cases, going to sleep immediately when disconnected from the power adapter.

Unfortunately, this behavior is inexorable for lithium-ion batteries. As soon as they leave the … Read more

Troubleshooting Tools: TextWrangler 2

Dan Frakes September 2005

Our monthly Troubleshooting Tools column, penned by MacFixIt Contributing Editor Dan Frakes, covers products that can help you maintain and fix your Mac.

If you're the type of Mac user who's hip to the latest software, you've surely heard of Bare Bones' TextWrangler. If not, the short description is that TextWrangler is one of the more powerful text editors on any platform, surpassed in some users' minds only by its big sibling, BBEdit, which has more tools for application development and coding and for working with HTML. But unlike BBEdit, which retails for $… Read more

mac.column.ted: Quick and Dirty Automator

Ted Landau October 2005

Take a look at any of Apple's promotional material for Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) and you'll find that a feature that consistently gets a top-billing is Automator. However, I suspect that, if you could check out how many people running Tiger have actually used Automator, you'd get a very low response.

That's too bad. Way too bad. Because Automator is Apple's best ever attempt at a macro-like utility for the masses. With Automator, it is surprisingly easy, and almost fun, to create "quick and dirty" solutions to … Read more

Tutorial: Fixes for system-wide freezes when Web browsing [avoiding lookupd bug]

Under Mac OS X 10.3.x and Mac OS X 10.4.x there exists an issue where some users experience a stall in Safari or other Web browsers when accessing certain Web sites that usually leads to a complete system freeze accompanied by the unending "spinning beach ball" progress indicator.

The typical chain of events is as follows:

Web pages suddenly stop loading - sometimes halfway through a page Applications (apparently all of them) then refuse to launch, first bouncing in the dock for up to a minute and then simply having a stationary, inactive icon … Read more

Tutorial: Getting into Login Items: Part 2

Ted Landau September 2005

Your list of Login Items can be seen by selecting the Login Items tab for your account, as accessed via the Accounts System Preferences pane. Last month, in Part 1 of this two-part tutorial, we covered the basics of working with Login Items: what they are, how they work and why to use them. In Part 2, we explore some more ?in-depth? and troubleshooting-related aspects of Login Items.

Q. In my Login Items list, one or more items have a Kind of ?Unknown.? Is this a problem and, if it is, how do I fix it?… Read more

Troubleshooting Tools: Printer Setup Repair

Published August 25th

Dan Frakes August 2005

Our monthly Troubleshooting Tools column, penned by MacFixIt Contributing Editor Dan Frakes, covers products that can help you maintain and fix your Mac.

Mac OS X has a flexible and powerful printing system, but this printing system is also one of the areas where users seem to have the most trouble, whether it's because printers can't be found, disappear from the Printer Setup Utility Printer List, or just plain don't print.

I don't have the space in this column to cover every printing issue you may encounter and how … Read more

Tutorial: Getting into Login Items: Part 1

Ted Landau August 2005

If you've never used Login Items, it's time to give them a whirl. They are among the most convenient shortcuts in Mac OS X. Actually, even if you have never created a Login Item, you may be using them anyway, as a result of applications that automatically add themselves to your list without exactly telling you.

And for those already familiar with Login Items, there may still be some tips and tricks of which you are unaware.

In this two-part tutorial (concluding next month), we explore all about Login Items. Using a Q&… Read more

Solving an issue where the Date/Time setting reverts to 1969

Some users power up their Macs to find they are re-living the year of the first moon landing, with the date and time setting reverting to Dec. 31st, 1969. The problem can be temporarily resolved by simply using the Date and Time System Preference pane to correct this setting, but the erroneous date/time may return the next time the system is restarted, causing significant issues with file creation dates, some date-reliant applications and more.

This problem generally has three causes, which can manifest singly or in tandem:

A faulty PowerBook/iBook primary battery that must be replaced Corrupt or … Read more