Moving your iTunes music library to another machine is really easy to do since Apple has made iTunes store all of your music in one central location. Unless you have changed it yourself to something else, iTunes music is by default stored in your home directory at ~/Music/iTunes/

Moving your iTunes Music Library

Using this method you can move your entire iTunes Music library to anywhere, including an external hard drive.

* The first thing you’ll want to do is locate your iTunes music library, as mentioned earlier this is located in your home directories Music folder, at ~/Music/iTunes
* Next, copy that entire ~/Music/iTunes folder to the new desired location. This may take a while depending on how large your music library is.
* Launch iTunes, enter the Preferences by going through the iTunes menu and selecting ‘Preferences’
* Click the ‘Advanced’ tab and you’ll see the location of your iTunes music library like the screenshot below. Click the ‘Change’ button and navigate to the new iTunes music library location (where you copied the ~/Music/iTunes/ folder too)

* Now click ‘OK’ and your iTunes library is set to it’s new location!

How do you move the iTunes library to a new Mac so that it is the main machine for my iPod/iPhone?

The iTunes music directory stores all of your iPhone/iPod ownership data, so moving this directory also moves ownership in that sense. This is achieved in practically the exact same way as the method above, you just need to connect the two Mac’s together either through a network or through something like firewire target disk mode (obviously this only works on Mac’s with firewire support). If you’re lucky enough to have both of your Mac’s with Firewire support, then hook a firewire cable between the two, and reboot one of them holding down T to place it into Target Disk Mode. When the machine boots it will act as an external hard disk on the other Mac, so you can easily and very quickly copy the contents of your ~/Music/ folder to the desired location.

Note that the above methods work all more or less the same with Windows PC’s as well, except that the Music/iTunes directory is usually located in ‘My Documents’ but you can transfer it to a Mac (or vice versa) or PC just the same.

From the Terminal, you can immediately open whatever folder or directory you are working within into the Finder by simply typing the following command:

open .

This will open the present working directory (PWD in the world of UNIX acronyms) in the Terminal / Command line into the Finder. So if you’re digging around in /Library/Preferences/Mozilla/ and type open . that folder will be opened in the Finder. The screenshot above shows this in action while the PWD within the Terminal is the /Applications directory, thus the Applications folder is opened in the Finder.

We have discussed SnowFall just about every holiday season for the past few years because it’s really that great of a screensaver for the winter and holiday season. It is so great that Apple has featured it in their Apple Stores around the holidays on numerous occasions, so if it has Apple’s seal of approval, it has ours.

SnowFall is delightfully simple but absolutely beautiful with it’s 3d rotating snow flakes, you can customize the screen saver in regards to how many snowflakes are falling, how fast they are going, the background color, the background image, and whether you want stripes or no stripes on the background. Here are some screenshots showing the customization and diversity of the screensaver, but I assure you screenshots do this screen saver absolutely no justice, you just need to install it yourself to see how beautiful it really is.

Download SnowFall Now

Installing SnowFall ScreenSaver in Mac OS X:
* Drag the SnowFall.qtz file into ~/Library/Screen Savers/
* Launch System Preferences and under “Desktop & ScreenSavers” you’ll be able select SnowFall
* Adjust settings as you see fit
* Enjoy falling snow on your Mac screen saver!

I use the pmset command to schedule my work Mac to boot before I get to the office, it’s very handy. To do that I used this command syntax:

pmset repeat wakeorpoweron MTWRF 07:45:00

This tells the Mac to either wake or boot (depending on it’s current state) every Monday through Friday at 7:45am. You can clear this type of repeat schedule by typing the following:

pmset repeat cancel

Note that you can do all of this through the Energy Saver GUI, which is an easier approach for people who are less comfortable in the Terminal. The main advantage to learning to use the pmset command via the command line though is that you can schedule these events remotely from anywhere just by using SSH to remotely access a Mac.

With Mac OS X Snow Leopard you can input Chinese Characters directly into the trackpad! This is an extremely cool feature but requires a newer Mac with a multitouch trackpad.

Enable Chinese Character Input in Mac OS X

* Launch System Preferences
* Select the Languages and Text pane
* Click the “Input Sources” tab across the top
* Scroll down to either “Chinese – Simplified” or “Chinese – Traditional”
* After enabled, you can show the trackpad handwriting surface in two ways:
* Either Hit Control+Shift+Space to bring up the Handwriting Input Surface (or whatever else you changed it to in prior screen)
* OR you can select the International keyboards menu bar item and select “Show Trackpad Handwriting” to bring up the Chinese Character Input screen

When the trackpad handwriting feature is enabled, the mouse is disabled for scrolling around and the trackpad itself becomes a writing surface allowing you to draw and input Chinese characters directly into it. The strokes are then monitored and you will be offered different character choices depending on what strokes you enter. Very cool!

[ above image borrowed from Apple.com ]

You can rate iTunes songs directly from your Dock! Just right-click (or control-click) the iTunes icon within the Dock, and scroll up to ‘Rating’ and from there select the Star Rating for the song.

If you’re looking for a free Mac ToDo list manager, look no further than these apps. We highlight our favorite three to-do list apps, and one of them already comes with your Mac!

Mac ToDo List Manager Software

Our first ToDo list manager app for the Mac is called Anxiety, and on top of having a very attractive interface, it has some pretty great features. Anxiety sits seamlessly in your menubar and syncs with both iCal and Mail, so you can be sure your to-do tasks are managed regardless of where you check them off. Done with your doctor appointment? Check it off in Anxiety and it will be removed from iCal, and vice versa. You can have multiple todo lists, easily add new task items to the lists, and get more information on each todo list item by simply double-clicking it which will bring up the relevant iCal event. This is definitely our top desktop software choice for a Mac todo list manager, check it out!

Anxiety home
Download Anxiety

TaskMate is another great choice for a to-do list manager app, it is extremely lightweight and allows you to easily add new todo tasks or delete completed ones. TaskMate is very no frills, there’s no fancy syncing or iCal integration, just pure todo list task management. If you don’t want or need the syncing features of Anxiety, but still want a great and simple to use to-do list manager app, TaskMate is a perfect choice.

TaskMate home
Download Taskmate

Doesn’t the Mac come with a free to-do list task manager?

Mac OS X doesn’t ship with a to-do list manager per se, but you can add and set iCal events to notify you of tasks that need to be done. An even simpler approach to Mac task list management though is to just use the Stickies app that is located in your Applications folder. There’s no fancy features, checkboxes, or syncing, but you can easily type in or delete any to-do list task and since it comes with your Mac already, you won’t need to download or install anything else.

Got a Mac and a PC running Ubuntu and want to control both from one computer? Make your life easier and share a mouse and keyboard between the two machines using Synergy! There’s a nice walkthrough on how to do this at Donncha O Caoimh’s blog, don’t pass it up if you’re an Ubuntu user.

Control Ubuntu and Mac OS X from one computer

If you Option-Click the Airport Menu you can get extended information about the wireless network you are connected to (and the ones you’re not as well), including Channel information, MAC address of the access point, signal strength, and the transmission rate. This is Snow Leopard only, if you haven’t upgraded to Snow Leopard yet and your Mac is compatible, it’s highly recommended.

Thanks to reader Jim Thorpe for the tip and screenshot!

You can easily convert WMV movie files to MOV format for free by using the FlipForMac Quicktime component plugin and QuickTime itself. Here’s what you will need to do:

Convert WMV file to MOV format in Mac OS X

First download FlipForMac, it is a WMV component plugin for Quicktime, the free version is all you will need to download and install. After you have installed the free FlipForMac plugin, launch QuickTime Player.

Now within QuickTime:
* Open the WMV movie file you want converted to .MOV format
* From the File menu select “Save As”
* Select the file type as ‘Movie’ and you will notice the filetype changes .mov
* Click “Save” and wait, the processing time depends on the length and size of the movie file.

All done! You just converted a WMV file to MOV format for free!