If you want to be absolutely sure your data is wiped clean with virtually no chance of recovery, by anyone, using any possible known recovery tools, look no further than Apple’s Disk Utility tool. The process is simple, and it can apply to any Mac drive, whether that’s an internal hard drive, external hard drive, and any connected drive of any format, meaning it does not need to just be a Mac drive to become securely formatted.

First a quick explanation of how secure format works: the drive is formatted and cleared of data as usual, but then the drive is rewritten with new randomly generated data, effectively overwriting any existing data on the drive and making it impossible to access or recover. It doesn’t stop there though, because that process is repeated multiple times, depending on which setting choice you select when securely formatting a drive. Let’s begin:

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Upgrading to Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.3 was a painless procedure until I tried to access some SMB mounts… suddenly I had no write access to my samba drives! I was presented with this error message:

The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have permission to access some of the items.

Thankfully there’s a workaround of sorts and it is pretty straightforward.

Fixing the Samba/SMB write access problem in 10.6.3:
* Open smb.conf on the samba server in your favorite text editor
sudo nano /etc/smb.conf
* Find the global samba settings section under [global] and add the following line:
unix extensions = no
* Save and close smb.conf (in nano, Control-O followed by the return key to save, then Control-X to exit)
* Restart the smb server

The cause of the SMB error in Mac OS X 10.6.3:
After digging around I found the cause on SplatDot, and I can confirm I had the same error messages pertaining to wide links and unix extensions enabled at the same time, two parameters which are incompatible. This is why the fix works, you are disabling unix extensions (of course, you could disable wide links but there is a performance hit to that method) and the error will no longer occur.

I imagine this is just a bug in the way that Mac OS X 10.6.3 handles SMB shares and it will probably be fixed relatively quickly by Apple, and when it is fixed you can and should reactivate unix extensions again on the Samba server. Doing so is just a matter of removing the unix extensions = no line from the smb.conf file.

Did you know that with DolphinProjects, you can run Mac OS X Leopard on a Sony PSP? Me neither, I think I’ll stick with my hackintosh. Anyway, this might not be the most useful hack in the world, but it is pretty cool. Here are some screen shots, as you can see it is remarkably squished with the PSP’s screen resolution of 480×272, but somehow the DolphinProjects folks managed to make it work (sort of).

[ screenshots via QJ Forums ]

Flash’s days of dominating video on the web are looking increasingly numbered. Fresh off the heals of Steve Jobs voicing his thoughts on Flash, Microsoft chimes in with another blow, Internet Explorer 9 will only support video playback in H.264 format with HTML5. Here’s the two major quotes from Microsoft:

The future of the web is HTML5. …In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video only

If you’re not totally sick of the Flash debate, the entire piece is reproduced below, from Microsofts IE blog (emphasis mine):
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iTunes 9.1 and forward changed the way it handles song conversions. I’m not quite sure why but Apple made it so converting a song to a different format is no longer just a matter of right-clicking and converting. Instead, with iTunes you’ll have to make an adjustment in iTunes Preferences first.

First, select the conversion format in iTunes:
* Open iTunes Preferences
* Click on “Import Settings”
* Choose the format you want to convert to by using the ‘Import Using’ menu: AAC, AIFF, Apple Lossless Encoder (MP4 or M4A), MP3, WAV
* Click ‘OK’

Now when you want to convert any song to the new format:
* Click on the song you want converted in iTunes
* Click on the ‘Advanced’ menu
* Scroll down to ‘Create MP3 Version’ (or whatever format you selected earlier)

iTunes will then convert the song to the format you selected just as it did in any prior version. If you want to make an iPhone ringtone you’ll want to use the Apple Lossless Encoder or AAC and then rename the .m4a file extension to .m4r just as before.

I’m always interested in how professionals use Mac’s in their everyday life. I couldn’t help but notice when browsing through photographer Noah Kalina‘s Flickr stream that he’s also a Mac user! Other than his photography, Noah is perhaps most famous for taking a daily picture of himself for six years and turning it into a video. He’s actually got a bunch of pictures of his MacBook Pro sitting alone in various hotel rooms as he’s traveled around.

If you’re interested in photography, take a look at some of Noah’s work via his Flickr stream (note that there is some NSFW content).

Adobe just can’t get a break with Flash on the Mac. Before you get too excited about the Flash Gala plugin, you might want to look at these performance results from Engadget. The new MacBook Pro with a Core i7 processor performed quite well with the beta Gala plugin, with CPU utilization going down anywhere from 30%-50%, but it’s brother with a Core i5 processor performed significantly worse than using the Flash player without hardware decoding, with processor utilization going up 20%.

What gives? Well, it’s basically beta software and Apple just recently opened access to the hardware, so there’s obviously a lot of room for optimization to be had. For the time being though, if you like running dodgy development builds and have a Mac with a GeForce 9400M, 320M, or 330M GPU, you can check out the beta plugin at Adobe Labs. Personally, we’d wait a while.

I don’t know about anyone else but I’d love to know Steve Jobs thoughts on this particular benchmark since he is such a fan of Flash, just for comic value alone.

Well, Steam for Mac was supposed to be available in April, but with the month nearly over they missed that release target and have now set an official release date of May 12. According to JoyStiq, Steam sent them the following short message:

“Valve today announced the public release of Steam for the Mac is May 12. Please stay tuned for more information.”

That’s it then, two weeks from now Mac users will finally have Steam. A two week delay isn’t too bad right? Let’s hope it doesn’t turn into two months.

If you have any interest in playing Team Fortress 2, CounterStrike, and the other Steam games, be sure to check out the system requirements for Steam in Mac OS X. Basically, you’ll want a newer Mac (think 2008 and newer) to run it well.

Do you have a collection of images and photos that you’d like to become a screen saver on the Mac? This offers a simple and nice way to customize a screen saver to include only your own images and pictures, and it’s quite easy to accomplish in macOS and Mac OS X.

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Gas Mask is a simple hosts file manager that sits in your menubar and allows you to easily edit and switch between multiple hosts files. With support for syntax highlighting, Growl, and hotkey hosts switching, it’s one of the quickest and easiest ways to deal with multiple hosts files on a Mac. Gas Mask is a freely available download,open source and donationware

Gas Mask developer home
Download now

If you ever wanted to know exactly what Steve Jobs thinks about Flash, you’ve got your chance. Apple’s CEO has released a lengthy letter detailing why Apple does not allow Flash on it’s iPhone, iPod, and iPad devices. Calling Flash part of the “past” and “PC era”, he addresses six major points as to why Apple is leaving Flash behind, they are:

* openness of the platforms
* the ‘full web’ and video experience
* reliability, security, and battery performance
* battery life of devices
* touch user-input
* the pain of third-party developer tools

The entire 1671 word essay in it’s entirety is repeated below:
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ShrinkIt is a handy little app that greatly reduces the file size of Illustrator generated PDF’s. Created as an internal tool, the developers over at Panic realized that PDF files saved from Adobe Illustrator were loaded with loads of extra nonsense metadata, even patterns, preview bitmaps, swatches, creating enormous PDF file sizes when they should be much smaller. The solution? Process the Adobe bloatfile through Apple’s PDF processor. You can do this yourself through Preview, but it’s a pain to open and re-save tons of PDF files, thus the creation of ShrinkIt. Now you can drag and drop your Illustrator PDF’s into ShrinkIt and you’ll save a whole lot of space (the original file is always kept, just renamed).

ShrinkIt is for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard only.

ShrinkIt developer home
Download now

Blizzard has just announced via Twitter that the official StarCraft 2 Beta client for Mac is now available. At the moment, the beta is only available for testing on North American servers but that is expected to expand soon.

Many game stores are offering free StarCraft 2 Beta keys with the pre-order of StarCraft 2, including GameStop.com and Amazon.com. Both Amazon and GameStop will email you the beta key within 5 days of your pre-order purchase.

Apple’s WorldWide Developer Conference is set for June 7-11 this year, and many desktop Mac developers are shaking their heads wondering where the love is. The tagline for this years WWDC conference is “The center of the app universe” and Apple’s Design Awards are curiously lacking a Mac OS X category, instead favoring iPhone and iPad apps from the App Store. The Mac development community was quick to notice this and have been voicing their opinions, as TUAW gathers a few poignant quotes from frustrated developers:

“Eliminating the Apple Design Awards for desktop applications in 2010 is premature and an insult to the thousands of programmers who devote their days to making the Mac desktop a fun and productive environment.” – Aaron Hillegass of Big Nerd Ranch

“…the lack of a Mac ADA when there is still great Mac software being made is a bit of a slap in the face. Whether it’s intentional or not, Apple is saying that the Mac is not an important platform compared to the iPhone and iPad.” – Justin Williams of Second Gear Software

Perhaps there is a lack of Mac attention because Mac OS X 10.7 has been delayed due to Apple’s focus on iPhone OS? Maybe there is some truth to the rumors of a desktop Mac App Store? Or is Apple planning a major announcement regarding the future of Mac OS at WWDC? With no clear answers, the Mac community is left to speculate. Whatever the reasons, many loyal Mac users and developers remain disappointed as this years event takes a clear turn away from the Mac desktop and into the mobile world.

If you’re a Mac user who is into gaming, you’ll probably be thrilled to know that Steam is available on the Mac OS ecosystem. But before you go jumping for joy for Steam on the Mac, you might want to make sure the Mac you have supports Steam.

Here’s what we know about the basic minimum system requirements for the Mac Steam client:

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Ping is an essential utility for network administrators, but it’s also pretty handy to check if websites are online, how your internet connection is working, if you are experiencing lag or packet loss on a network connection, or to determine if a network resource is available.

Mac users can access and use ping to target any domain or IP address.

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Apple’s first tablet of sorts, the Newton, was introduced 17 years ago in 1993 but didn’t catch on. People weren’t ready for it, and the technology wasn’t as fancy or awe inspiring as when you fast-forward the iPad of today. Interesting how they’re so similar though, isn’t it? CheerfulSW summarizes the two devices as so:

1998: A revolutionary, lovable Apple PDA with little squareish icons, on-screen keyboard, common icons across the bottom, single-tasking, and the best compact keyboard of the decade, complete with an ungainly but functional fold-out case. The Newton.

2010: A revolutionary, lovable Apple PDA with little squareish icons, on-screen keyboard, common icons across the bottom, single-tasking, and the best compact keyboard of the decade, complete with an ungainly but functional fold-out case. The iPad.

When I see things like this I can’t help but wonder where the Mac, iPad, and iPhone are going to be years from now, as Apple continues to refine the user experience. Will the two platforms eventually merge?

If you’re interested in the iPad, the Newton, usability, and design, check out CheerfulSW’s enjoyable read on the iPad being a “work of obvious”.

If you are running a dual-display setup, you can easily adjust the primary display monitor in Mac OS X. When would you want to do this? For example, if you have a MacBook Pro 13″ hooked up to a larger external display, and you want the external display with it’s higher resolution to become the primary display, and your MacBook Pro with it’s smaller resolution to become the secondary display. This is just a matter of settings adjustments and it only takes a minute to configure, though it’s not particularly obvious at first glance.

Let’s walk through how to set the primary screens on a multi-display Mac setup.

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