“I just got a brand new MacBook, what should I do with my old Mac?”

This is a very common question I get, and I typically give one of four answers depending on who’s asking the question. I’ll go through each choice and hopefully they’ll give you some ideas:

1) Setup the old Mac next to your new one and use mouse and keyboard sharing

For power users and professionals, this is nearly always my first suggestion. Using something like Synergy or Teleport, you can share a single mouse and keyboard across multiple Macs, effectively giving you not just two screens, but two displays with full computing power behind them. Having dual displays dramatically increases productivity and with the extra processing power having two computers is kind of the best of this world. Use your older less powerful Mac for things that are not so processor intensive and more mundane, like email, web browsing, instant messaging, etc, and use your new more powerful Mac as the primary machine for your more complex tasks, be it developing, video editing, photo manipulation, whatever. Try this out, you can thank me later.

2) Repurpose the older Mac as a media center or file server

This is a bit more complex, but if you’ve got some time on your hands it can be very rewarding to setup a file server using file sharing or a media center using something like Boxee or Plex/XBMC. If you’re setting up a media center, just remember the types of content you can playback are dependent on the Mac’s hardware capabilities, be sure to check if your Mac can play HD video if you’re looking to play high quality video files. Ready to jump in? Check out how to setup a Mac Mini as a media center.

3) Give the older Mac to a friend or family member

Maybe your kid would like a Mac in their own room, or maybe your Mom is battling viruses and malware on her clunker of a Windows PC. Fixing up a Mac and giving it to someone else is not only a nice gesture but because of their stability and ease of use, it just may reduce those family tech support calls you inevitably get because you’re the computer guy in the household.

4) Sell your old Mac

If all else fails, or you just want to recoup some of the costs of your new purchase, sell the old Mac. Mac’s retain their resale value amazingly well, far more than any other PC. Craigslist is a great way to sell just about anything you have laying around and Mac’s are no exception, but if you live in a smaller community you might not have much luck. EBay is the other option since you can ship to buyers globally, and while they take a commission of the sale, I’ve generally found that used Mac’s sell for more on eBay than they do on Craigslist. Just do a quick scan of ads on both sites to see the price you can expect to get for your used Mac.

[ above MacBook Pro image from Flickr ]

If your Mac has a SuperDrive or Disc drive, you can boot the Mac from any bootable DVD or CD by using a special keyboard shortcut. The bootable disc can be an OS X system restore disc, an OS X installation disc, or even a third party OS disc like Linux.

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You can precisely adjust the volume levels on a Mac by holding down the Shift+Option keys while pressing the Volume Up / Down keys. This lets you adjust the sound level by 1/4 of each notch (as opposed to a full notch), offering precise incremental control to how loud or soft output is from the speakers.

This is perfect if you like to precisely adjust the audio level of speakers, though it’s maybe used best with external speakers which tend to play either too soft or too loud. It works on the Mac internal speakers too, and headphones as well. Easily the best way to find the best volume for you, try it out and find something that sounds good for your speakers and your ears.

You’ll find this great little trick works in all versions of Mac OS X, from the earliest versions onward through Mavericks and Yosemite. Note that newest versions of OS X require a slightly different modifier of the Option key and the appropriate function keys,.

Oh and a bonus tip that many users may enjoy: this neat little precision trick works to change the brightness in incremental levels of any Mac display and screen as well!

iStumbler has long been one of my favorite tools in Mac OS X to discover available wireless networks, and the new version adds support for Snow Leopard (10.6.2 or later). Other than 10.6 support, there’s a neat new GPS location feature, and the usual support for Bluetooth and Bonjour, and various bug fixes. My only complaint is that iStumbler doesn’t find as many available wireless devices than what’s shown available in my Airport menu, but I still think it’s definitely a must-have utility for any network administrator trying to troubleshoot wireless connections or even just those with a cheeky disposition.

Download iStumbler now
Developer home

Have you ever wished you had a warm cuddly iPad stand? Well, if you’re a cat owner you just might.

As you know, cats love to snuggle up on the lap of their servants err I mean owners, so why not take advantage of your kitties snuggly nature and use them as a holster for your iPad? That’s what these people did, and it looks like it works really well!

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Look at the above screenshot. See how the icon fades over repeated creation of the alias? I had never noticed this before. Myself and others get a washed out appearance of the icon, while some will see a sepia tint.

Try it out yourself, select anything on your Mac then hit Command+L repeatedly to create an alias of it and watch it fade… I don’t know how useful this is, mostly because I don’t know anyone that creates ten aliases of an alias, but it’s just another example of the attention to detail Apple offers in Mac OS X. Scratch that, apparently this is a bug in ColorSync that causes each icon preview to be re-adjusted by the calibrated display profile.

Kind of an interesting bug that also kind of feels like a feature, doesn’t it?

Thanks to FinerThingsInMac for locating it.

The iPhone and iPod Touch have a built in motion sensor that lets you shake the device to shuffle music, which is a really cool feature… unless you’re running.

There are two solutions to this problem, the immediate one is to simply hit the sleep button on the top of the iPhone after you have selected music to play. This turns the display off and locks the iPhone/iPod into playing music, thus automatically preventing the random song skipping when movement is sensed.

The other option, which we prefer, is to just disable the ‘Shake to Shuffle’ feature entirely, which stops the music from skipping completely:

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Here’s something you don’t see every day: the CEO of a major corporation completely dressed down and hanging around their storefronts. Apparently Steve Jobs occasionally pops into Apple Store’s for various reasons, although this particular picture was supposedly taken on the iPad launch day.

Thanks to Damien for sending us the picture and story from TwitPic.

Is a DVD or CD stuck in your MacBook or MacBook Pro? Having a disk jammed in your Mac is really frustrating, but you can usually get it out by using a few different tricks. The methods outlined below are for when a disc is truly stuck in the Mac.

Eject a stuck CD/DVD from a MacBook Pro

If you have already tried holding down the Eject key on your keyboard to no avail, try these tips to ditch that pesky DVD from the drive:

* Launch the Terminal and type the following at the command line:

drutil eject

* Reboot the MacBook / MacBook Pro and hold down the mouse/trackpad button as the Mac boots, the disk should pop out.

CD disc still stuck in the MacBook?

If you have a really stubborn stuck disc or CD, you can also try the following. This tip was sent in by an ex-Apple genius:

• Shut down the Mac
• Boot the machine holding down the Trackpad button to initiate a ‘force eject’
• Turn the MacBook Pro on its side, with the CD/DVD drive pointing down, and shake, the CD should pop out

The disc is still stuck! Now what??

Did the above tips not work to eject the disk? If a DVD is completely stuck in the MacBook / MacBook Pro drive and it’s still spinning, you can also try this trick: get a small piece of thin cardboard (business card or a credit card works fine too) and insert it above the stuck DVD and press down slightly to stop the disk from spinning, now reboot the MacBook while holding down the trackpad button and you should hear the familiar eject sound, then disk should come right out. Be careful not to damage the disk or your drive though!

You can also learn how to Eject a Stuck Disk from your Mac SuperDrive using a variety of tricks from the desktop to using Disk Utility.

Prior to Mac OS X 10.5, your Mac’s desktop had rounded screen corners. Now you can bring those smooth rounded corners back with Displaperture (say that ten times fast). The developer jokingly notes “enjoy CRT nostalgia” but I think the rounded corners are actually kind of nice looking with the rest of the Mac OS X GUI.
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Here’s a creative use of four iPad’s, I wonder how well it works?

LonelyPeopleWithiPads

Target Disk Mode is a very handy feature available to use with Mac’s that have Thunderbolt or Firewire ports, and it allows you to use one Mac as an external drive on another host machine. This incredibly useful feature makes troubleshooting, installations, large file transfers, and critical backups extremely easy and very fast.

Before beginning, be sure both Mac computers have Firewire or ThunderBolt ports, and that you have a Firewire or Thunderbolt cable. Additionally, each Mac must use the same port, for example, if you’re booting target disk with Thunderbolt, both Macs must use thunderbolt to connect to one another. A converter may work, but it is not recommended.

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There’s been a barrage of attention on the iPad and it’s hard to go anywhere online and not see a mention of it, it’s truly a memorable device that is sure to change computing history.

I have no doubt the device is fun, incredible, even revolutionary, but after seeing some of the iPad setups out there I am left wondering are people missing the point of the iPad?

Look around online and see if something pops out at you too; the amount of people using iPad’s with an external keyboard. If that’s their purpose, why not get a laptop?

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“What are the best speakers for the iPhone?”

My sister just got an iPhone and called me from Best Buy asking me about an iPhone speaker dock to plug it into… working with a budget of about $200 I told her to skip the model she was looking at, and save some money by going for the same Altec Lansing T612 set that I have. This recommendation comes directly from personal experience, there may be better ipod speakers out there, especially at a higher price point, but out of the three brands and various models I have direct experience with, the Altec Lansing T612 blew the others away, and its $160 on Amazon.

Here’s why I am recommending the Altec Lansing T612:

* The sound quality beats anything else on the market, especially in the price range
* Airplane mode is not required with the iPhone, meaning keep your phone on, get calls, and have no cellular interference!
* The music automatically pauses when a call comes into your iPhone
* Remote control is fully compatible with speakers, power, volume levels, and iTunes.
* It’s small and lightweight so you can carry it around your house/apartment, into the yard, anywhere there’s a power outlet, plug it in!
* There’s an AUX input port so you can pipe other audio sources into the speakers if you want to
* It’s easily wall mountable
* It charges your iPhone (or iPod touch, or other iPods too)

I can’t recommend this model enough for iPhone users. The problem with many iPod docks when you plug an iPhone into them (assuming the iPhone will even fit) is that they will get massive interference from the cellular network! You’ll get an often constant buzzing sound as the cellular waves interfere with the speakers, this does not happen on the Altec T612 because it is shielded. There is no need to put the iPhone into airplane mode like so many other iPhone Speaker docks require, you can still receive and make phone calls with your phone while it’s plugged in and charging.

Of course since it’s a speaker system, what you want to know is how good it sounds, right? The sound quality on this thing is pretty amazing, it produces rich bass and a crisp sound even though the entire device is relatively small, and it can easily be cranked up very loud to entertain a social gathering or party. In warmer weather I frequently bring the Dock out back and play it into the yard for BBQ’s, it’s plenty loud and sounds great.

Although I use it with my iPhone, it’s actually compatible with far more than just the iPhone and iPod Touch, including all of the following iPod’s: iPod mini; iPod nano 1G, 2G, 3G, 4G; iPod classic 4G, 5G, 5.5G, 6G; iPod touch 1G, 2G; iPhone 1G, 3G. This compatibility makes it easy for other people to come over and plug in their iPod to share their music and charge their own devices up.

So that’s my personal recommendation for the best iPhone speakers, and I don’t think there is any real competition anywhere near the price range.

You can get the Altec Lansing T612 Digital Speaker for iPod and iPhone on Amazon for around $160 with free shipping.

Using multiple monitors is an easy way to dramatically increase your productivity, but I’ve often heard complaints that when the secondary monitor needs to have the menubar to make it even more useful. SecondBar solves that problem. This nifty little app just duplicates the menubar across multiple displays, letting you have full access to the menubar regardless of what screen you’re using.

Note that the software is in early stages of development and is known to be quirky and even crash under some applications, so use at your own risk.

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[ above image from Developer home ]

It’s barely been out a few days, but someone has already jailbroken the iPad. Infamous iPhone hacker MuscleNerd successfully ported over the Spirit Jailbreak for iPhone to the iPad, and he posted a couple screenshots and a video (embedded below) demonstrating command line root-level access on the device. It never ceases to amaze me how fast these guys work, and it’ll only be a (relatively) short matter of time before anyone can jailbreak their iPad. Exciting, now I just need an iPad…

[ Twitter: MuscleNerd via Engadget]

You can open a folder into a new window (or tab) by holding down the Command key when you double-click on the folder to open it within the Finder of Mac OS X.

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Want to dramatically boost your computing productivity? Get an additional monitor. Whether you have an iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, or Mac Mini, you will love it once you have it. I can’t think of a single other addition to a Mac setup that will increase productivity like a second monitor does. You instantly have significantly more screen real estate, which directly translates into more productivity.

What you’ll get with a second monitor

* See more of everything by adding additional screen real estate
* Work on multiple projects simultaneously
* Multiple full-size browser windows concurrently: a must for any web worker.
* Edit code in one screen while viewing the changes instantly in the other
* Manipulate and match photos easier
* Significantly reduce the amount of time spent dragging windows and changing window focus
* It looks cool! (OK maybe just to us geeks, this is a fringe benefit)

I would go so far as to say that having an external monitor is absolutely essential for any Mac laptop user since you have less screen real estate by default. Yes it’s great to use your Mac on the go, but when you’re not on the move, it’s all the more great to set that MacBook next to a large display and turn your 13″ screen into a secondary display alongside a beautiful 22″ LCD. I’d highly recommend getting an external screen that hits the maximum resolution a MacBook supports at 1080p via DVI (newer models and MacBook Pro’s go up to 2560×1600 via dual-link DVI).

Convinced? Check out the bestselling monitors at Amazon.com

Here’s a couple Mac setups that feature a second monitor: