I still don’t know why AT&T and Apple don’t enable Internet Tethering by default on the iPhone, but nonetheless they don’t… but you can enable it yourself with a little work! The simplest way I’ve found without Jailbreaking your iPhone requires a few settings changes from updating a system profile, which you can download from BenM.at, just visit the page from your iPhone. After you install the adjusted profile, Internet Tethering will be enabled, easy huh? This definitely works, but it does have the strange effect of disabling Visual Voicemail… now supposedly if you have AT&T then this configuration profile fixes that problem, but I haven’t tried it myself, so your mileage may vary and proceed at your own risk (remember to visit that link from your iPhone). Basically after you install that profile and double-check the setting exists, have your iPhone hooked up to your Mac (or PC? untested) and the rest is pretty much setup for you, your Mac should pull DHCP settings from AT&T and suddenly you’re using the AT&T data network from your Mac via your iPhone! Sweet!

So again here’s the breakdown, visit these links and install the profiles from your iPhone:
Internet Tethering + Visual voicemail profile – AT&T only! – untested personally, but supposedly works
Internet Tethering but disabled visual voicemail – worked for me, YMMV though

If you run into any problems, simply go to Settings > General > Profiles and delete the profile and things should be back to normal. Remember to proceed at your own risk! I have no idea if AT&T will start charging you different rates or if this voids your warranty, but like any hack, it’s best to proceed with caution and expect some disapproval from AT&T and Apple. Hopefully Apple and AT&T will soon enable this feature by default and won’t charge anymore for it.

I love Pandora and use it all the time, so I was pretty frustrated when I discovered that I had hit the 40 hour limit and was being asked to pay for the service. Well, like any good Mac geek I poked around and figured out a way to reset the 40 hour limit (Windows users scroll below for how-to), and here’s how I did it:

Reset / Remove Pandoras 40 hour limit

* In your Home directory, open Library > Preferences > Macromedia > Flash Player > #SharedObjects
* You’ll find a bunch of directories in here with various randomly generated names like JZK819C3P and H8R1ZK19M, etc – these are basically cookies for Flash Player and if you don’t mind losing other settings elsewhere, you can delete all these folders to reset your Pandora music limit, but if you’d rather preserve other settings and just reset Pandora, read on…
* In the Finder window Search Box, type “pandora” and then select the folder “Macromedia” as your search directory rather than ‘This Mac’
* Delete just these files/folders, they’re usually labeled pandora, pandora.com, and #pandora.com
* Ta da! Your Pandora limit is now reset and you have another 40 hours to listen! Alternatively, you could just pay the $1/month to use Pandora, it’s such a great app it’s worth it.

Reset / Remove the Pandora 40 hour limit in Windows

Many of us have Windows PC’s as well, so we might as well cover the bases for the Windows XP/Vista/7 users too:

* Navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects
Replace “USERNAME” with your user name
* Same as above, there will be a bunch of random folder names, you can delete them all, or just the ones containing ‘pandora’ in the name
* Now navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\macromedia.com\support\flashplayer\sys
* Find the folder named ‘#pandora.com’ and delete it, or just delete all the files
* Finally, navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Cookies and delete everything labeled ‘pandora’

Following all these directions, and you’ll be listening to Pandora free of the forty hour limitation again! Enjoy!

iPhone / iPod Touch users: the iPhone and iPod Touch version of Pandora seems to be immune to the 40 hour music limit (for now at least).

So now that Snow Leopard is out, how does it stack up? In many cases it’s faster and in some cases, well, it’s slower. It appears that the most significant speed gains are in Apple’s own software and Mac OS X itself, this is likely because Apple has optimized as much as possible to use Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL. Overall, nearly everyone who has installed Snow Leopard agrees that their Mac feels faster and more responsive, and Gizmodo has a pretty compelling video of the speed boost in Apple’s Preview app. For me personally, Snow Leopard feels a lot faster, and I’m pretty happy about that! Check out the links below for more.

Gizmodo: Snow Leopard review – lightened and enlightened

MacWorld: Gauging Snow Leopard’s Speed Boosts

Engadget: Snow Leopard Review

Successfully developing for the iPhone and iPod Touch is fun but it’s not easy, sure, you’ll want a good book, but after you’ve written your first app, what do you do next? TechCrunch for mobile geeks site MobileCrunch has a couple great detailed tips for small independent developers to increase their chances for success on Apple’s App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Here’s the readers digest version:

• #1) The Hare beats the Tortoise. Develop fast, release often.
• #2) Make sure the price is right. (basically, $1)
• #3) Show off your feathers. (ie: have a good looking icon and screenshots)
• #4) Partner for success. (group with other small developers to cross promote)
• #5) PR isn’t all its cracked out to be. (send links to blogs and reviewers, but don’t bother spending big money on a PR rush)

Read the details and more helpful hints at MobileCrunch: Rising to the top -5 ways indie developers succeed in the app store

I installed some Software Updates recently on an older Mac Mini and left my house to go on a run, I came back about an hour later to find that nothing was installed yet, my Mac Mini was stuck on “Configuring Installation” – hmm now what? Well, it’s a rare occurrence, but it can happen and thankfully it’s easily fixable. First, do not reboot the machine half installed! Follow these steps from Apple and you should be good to go:

Quit (or if necessary, Force Quit) Software Update.

Click the Finder icon in the Dock.

From the Go menu choose “Go to Folder”.

Type: /Library/Updates

Click Go. The /Library/Updates folder opens.

Select all contents of this folder and move them to the Trash.

Once the above steps are complete, use Software Update again to re-download and install the update.

Phew! Apple to the rescue! This hanging installation problem was supposedly fixed in 10.5.6 so anyone that has kept up to date thus far will probably not run into this problem… unless you’re like me and have older Macs that you neglect to update the software on more than once a year! Oops!

If you’ve ever wanted to know what’s being executed, which packages are being installed, and the installation directories and file locations of a Mac OS X system install, then you’ll enjoy this tip sent to us on Twitter by Murtika Laksmi:

While installing Snow Leopard do the following:
* At the “Mac OS X Installer” menu select “Window > Installer Log”
* In the “Installer Log” select “Show All Logs”
* Resize the window so you can see both the text and progress bar
It was quite interesting to watch during my upgrade!

Thanks Murtika!

I was pretty excited to install Snow Leopard today, and the upgrade from 10.5.8 went without a hitch, finishing in about an hour. A couple Snow Leopard install tips:
* Be sure to customize your installation to have Rosetta support, as it’s not installed by default anymore.
* If you’re an X-Code user, you’ll probably want to upgrade that separately as well (included in the optional installs directory on the Snow Leopard disc).

Positive Observations: Finder is definitely snappier, so are Preview, Safari, iTunes, and iChat. The new darker default display gamma is a big improvement, looks very nice.

Negative Observations: Wireless connections are dropping randomly and constantly on my MacBook, looks like I’m not alone here, I can sustain a connection longer than a few seconds by not using DHCP and manually entering the necessary TCP/IP settings. Synergy does not work well, if at all, unable to connect, timeouts, and drops (could be related to aforementioned network problems?)

It’s worth mentioning that several of my friends and colleagues have installed Snow Leopard on their machines (upgrades and fresh installs) with no issues.

This is somewhat controversial because it is against the Apple EULA, but apparently you can save $140 if you’re a Tiger 10.4 user and run the 10.6 Snow Leopard upgrade without a problem. To make things even more interesting, popular Mac writer Walt Mossberg actually recommends that you do this if you are a Tiger user. So it’s really up to the end users, either save money and upgrade directly, or go the other route and you’ll be out $140.

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is a great upgrade and it’s one I would highly recommend installing on any compatible Mac. The fact that you can save a lot of money by upgrading directly from 10.4 is a huge bonus.

You can get Mac OS X 10.6.3 Snow Leopard from Amazon with free shipping for $29.

As with all software upgrades, be sure to backup your data before installing.

A friend of mine that is new to Macs couldn’t figure out how to get a CD to eject, after some frustration he then complained that his MacBook doesn’t have the paperclip hole to forcibly eject a disc from the superdrive. After some discussion I realized he’s probably not alone in his confusion of how eject a stuck disk on a Mac, so here’s a few different ways to do it, ranging from easy to more advanced. If a disk is still stuck in the drive after these methods have been exhausted, you may have an actual hardware problem.

Eject a stuck disk from your Mac

Easy Mac disk eject methods

1) Press and hold the Eject key on your keyboard, it looks like the above icon in this post

2) Right-click (control-click) on the disks icon on the Desktop and select “Eject” from the contextual menu

3) Drag the disks icon to the Trash bin within the Dock

4) Select the disk icon and hit “Command-E”

More advanced Mac stuck disk eject methods

1) Launch Disk Utility and select the CD/DVD from the sidebar. Click the Eject icon at the top of the Disk Utility screen, it should pop right out.

2) Launch the Terminal and type following command: drutil eject

3) If all else fails, try Restarting your Mac and hold down the mouse button (or trackpad button if you have a laptop) as the system boots. Hold it down until the system boots, again the disk should come out.

In the rare event that I have a stuck disk in my Mac I opt for the Terminal command mentioned above, it hasn’t failed me yet.

Yet another feature to be excited about, ZDNet reports that Apple has included a malware blocker in 10.6 Snow Leopard. Personally I have never run into any malware or viruses in Mac OS X, but it’s nice to know that Apple is including this functionality by default in their latest operating system. Better safe than sorry!

Read more at ZDNet: Apple adds malware blocker in Snow Leopard

[below image is borrowed from ZDNet]