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:

You can lock the screen orientation on the iPad 1, iPad 2, iPad 3, iPad 4 from rotating when the device is shifted in orientation by hitting the Screen Rotation Lock button.

The screen lock button is located on the side of the device, located above the volume controls.

Once you hit that screen rotation lock button, you can rotate the device horizontal or vertical and the screen itself won’t rotate. This is great for reading in bed and for so many other purposes.

This is a handy iPad feature and I wish something similar was available on the iPod Touch and iPhone, anytime I use the thing lying down it’s rotating all over the place making it practically inusable. Thankfully the iPad gets it right!

This applies to the original iPad (iPad 1), iPad 2, iPad 3, and iPad 4. Later iPad models eventually lost the side button, instead moving the screen lock orientation button into the Settings.

[ via Apple ]

Here’s another wild setup that includes a 24″ iMac, a Mac Pro with dual 24″ displays, a MacBook Pro, and a couple decked out PC’s thrown in for good measure. Oh and the four guitars with who knows how much recording equipment. Sweet!

[ via Flickr ]

The recent 10.6.3 update is said to include a few Airport/wireless updates that improve reliability:

* general reliability for wireless connections.
* improvements to 802.1X reliability, including closed network connections, and WPA2.

Unfortunately that wasn’t the case with the update on my machine, my wireless connection started having problems immediately after the 10.6.3 update. If you’re having problems, here’s the fix that worked for me. If you want more technical information, read on below for more details.

Fix for 10.6.3 Wireless connection problems:

This is what has worked to resolve the wireless connection dropping since 10.6.3:
add a new Network Connection Location, here’s how to do that:
* Open ‘System Preferences’
* Click the ‘Network’ icon
* At the top ‘Location’ pull-down menu navigate down to ‘Edit Locations’
* Click on the + sign to add a new Location
* Name it anything, click OK,
* Select the “Network Name” (wireless router) then click Apply

Your wireless should now disconnect from the router (and old location) and reconnect again under this new location. New Location means a fresh start with clean preferences and cache files I suppose, and since doing that I have been able to maintain a steady wireless connection again. Note that you will almost certainly get a new IP address if you’re using DHCP, so if you have any IP dependent network resources don’t be surprised if you have to update those to the new IP address.

Technical details on the 10.6.3 airport/wireless connection dropping

With my wireless connection dropping constantly, I immediately started poking around in the Console, (located in /Applications/Utilities/) which is one of the best places to start when trying to determine system problems.

Within Console I looked at kernel.log to see the following message, repeated every few minutes:
kernel[0]: en1 duplicate IP address 192.168.0.115 sent from address 00:92:e2:5e:1c:02
kernel[0]: AirPort: Link Down on en1. Reason 4 (Disassociated due to inactivity).
kernel[0]: AirPort: Link Up on en1
kernel[0]: AirPort: RSN handshake complete on en1
kernel[0]: en1 duplicate IP address 192.168.0.115 sent from address 00:92:e2:5e:1c:02

Further poking around in Console to system.log shows the following messages repeated:
mDNSResponder[20]: DeregisterInterface: Frequent transitions for interface en1 (192.168.0.101)
mDNSResponder[20]: 17: Could not write data to client because of error - aborting connection

There certainly isn’t inactivity, the connection drops even during heavy packet transfer. For whatever reason, after the 10.6.3 update it looks like my machine (the MAC address shown above) is bombarding the router with multiple connection attempts from the same IP, even when it’s connected, causing the router to drop my Mac’s wireless connection. Certainly strange behavior. Thus far, the solution outlined above has worked to maintain a steady airport connection this morning, and I hope it stays that way.

A few of us at OS X Daily haven’t exactly been strangers to Snow Leopard wireless problems, but I did find it interesting that the 10.6.3 update that is supposed to resolve issues actually caused some for me.

If you’re still having connection difficulties, check out our guide to troubleshooting wireless connection problems on your Mac.

Flash on the Mac is broken

Steve Jobs is now famously purported to have called Flash a “CPU hog” and “old technology”, something I’d have to agree with based on my experience. Flash is simply broken on the Mac, there is just no denying it. I don’t know what the problem is and I’m not going to pretend to know, but I do know that it makes for a generally miserable experience to encounter a Flash website when you’re on a Mac.

Apple’s problems with the Adobe Flash plugin have been in tech news a lot recently, so we’re going to show what the complaints are about. It doesn’t matter how good your browser is, the Flash plugin will probably screw it up by taking over every possible CPU cycle. Load a Flash-based site and your MacBook Pro will sound like it’s preparing to enter Earths orbit. This is what people are complaining about, and this is exactly why Apple doesn’t want Flash on their touch devices.
Read more »

This is an unusual iTunes error that you shouldn’t see too often:

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Today is April Fools Day in the USA, which makes the internet as a whole generally pretty ridiculous because there’s so many pranks with fake and silly news stories floating around. Keeping with the goofy spirit, here’s some easy and funny pranks to play on a fellow Mac user:

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Dock.prefPane

“The document ‘Dock.prefPane’ could not be opened. System Preferences cannot open files in the ‘Mac OS X Preference Pane’ format.”

Oh that makes perfect sense, a default preference pane can’t be opened by the System Preferences? What??

Maybe this is an April Fools joke from System Preferences… but a reboot fixed it.

If you have a Hackintosh desktop or Netbook, you may want to do a bit of research before jumping into the Mac OS X 10.6.3 system update. Users around the web are reporting everything from easy success to catastrophic failure, which isn’t too surprising considering the hardware diversity of Hackintosh systems.

Simplest advice: Follow the path of someone who has done the update on a machine that is either identical or closely mimics your own build. For anyone that uses sleep, if you want to minimize the likelihood of troubles when updating to 10.6.3 it’s a good idea to move the old SleepEnabler.kext since it will almost certainly cause a kernel panic on reboot when it butts heads with the new kernel.

It is absolutely essential that you backup your existing Hackintosh Mac OS X 10.6.2 install before attempting to 10.6.3 update!

Resources for updating your Hackintosh to 10.6.3:

Prasys: Straight Forward 10.6.3 Upgrade Guide – a nice and easy to follow step-by-step walkthrough with screenshots on updating to 10.6.3

TonyMacX86: Mac OS X 10.6.3 update – Great general advice and information on the 10.6.3 update, what has been problematic, what works, and more importantly: SOLUTIONS to known problems. Highly recommended resource.

Google Spreadsheet: 10.6.3 update and hardware – this is a great spreadsheet maintained by TonyMacX86 that shows hardware and known problems. Definitely worth a look.

LifeHacker: Update a charm to 10.6.3 – for Desktop Hackintosh users who followed the LifeHacker guide in particular. Not particularly informative other than a ‘it worked for me!’ so a strong YMMV, read the comments for a slew of user problems (and successes too).

TonyMacX86 Forums – if you’re banging your head into the wall to figure out what went wrong on your desktop Hackintosh update, this is a great forum to check out.

InsanelyMac Forums – another good resource for questions and answers to various Hackintosh install problems, less personal than TonyMacX86 though.

MyDellMini: Official Mac OS X 10.6.3 update thread for Dell Mini 9 and Dell Mini 10v – if you have a Dell Mini, go to the experts. An excellent guide on updating your Mini to 10.6.3, don’t miss it.

NetKas: Advice on updating to 10.6.3 with ATI cards

Meklort – a leader in the Hackintosh world, most relevant to Netbook users.

If you happened to have followed the LifeHacker guide to build a Hackintosh Desktop you may have the easiest update as a desktop user, although some users in their comments are reporting update troubles with identical systems. Various Hackintosh Netbook reports vary widely, but the Dell Mini 9 and 10v is fairing well thanks to the folks at MyDellMini forums.

If you’re a bit squeamish or don’t want a hassle, waiting a few weeks to update to 10.6.3 may well work in your favor as the Hackintosh community continues to refine and update their techniques.

“Will my Mac play HD video?”

If you have a new Mac, the answer is almost certainly yes. The ability for your Mac to play H.264 High Definition HD video content depends entirely on it’s hardware capabilities. Here are the hardware requirements for HD video per Apple’s guidelines, and my recommendations based on personal experience with smooth HD playback on Mac’s:

Playing 720p Content on your Mac:

To play 720p video at 1280×720 resolution and roughly 30 frames a second, your Mac will need at least the following:
* 1.8 GHz PowerMac G5 or a 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo or faster processor (Intel Core Duo chip highly recommended)
* 256MB of RAM or more (1GB+ highly recommended)
* 64 MB or better video card

Playing 1080p Content on your Mac:

Playing 1080p is more hardware intensive since it runs at 1920×1080 resolution, you will need at least the following Mac configuration to get roughly 25 frames per second:
* Dual 2.0 GHz PowerMac G5 or a 2.0 GHz Intel Core Duo or faster processor (Intel 2 Core Duo chip highly recommended)
* 512MB of RAM or more (2GB+ highly recommended)
* 128MB or better video card

For the best high-def video playback experience, I’d recommend having only the HD video playing and not a bunch of background apps or processes if you can avoid it, this is particularly true if you have a less powerful machine. Having a dedicated machine like a Mac Mini as a media center makes for a particularly good Mac HD experience when hooked up to an external HDTV. Of course if you have a brand new Mac, or a fancy Mac Pro with 8 cores and 12GB of RAM, then you’ll have great playback as well.

Basically, the better the Mac’s hardware, the better your HD video performance will be, the higher the frame rates, and the smoother the video.

If you are interested, read more about creating a Mac Media Center, it’s a lot easier than you’d think.

[ Click for full resolution at 1920×1200 ]

I really like the Aurora spacey galactic themed wallpapers that come with Snow Leopard, so I was pretty excited when I came across this original background picture on one of our readers websites. It’s a great variation of the galaxy theme and looks completely at home on my Mac’s desktop.

Thanks for my new desktop picture Anton!

If you have a bunch of files you need renamed on your Mac, and the computer isn’t new enough to have the built-in batch rename feature, then Name Mangler is a decent solution in a fairly crowded field. With a good interface that is intuitive to use, you can easily batch rename tons and tons of files just by dragging and dropping them into the application.

Name Mangler goes beyond just renaming something from file1 to file2 though, there are many more advanced batch renaming capabilities including some of the following types of situations:
Read more »

Check your Software Updates! Mac OS X 10.6.3 update has been released and is recommended to install for all Mac OS X Snow Leopard users. The amount of fixes is pretty substantial, here’s the main list provided in the Software Update panel:

* improve the reliability and compatibility of QuickTime X
* address compatibility issues with OpenGL-based applications
* address an issue that causes background message colors to display incorrectly in Mail
* resolve an issue that prevented files with the # or & characters in their names from opening in Rosetta applications
* resolve an issue that prevented files from copying to Windows file servers
* improve performance of Logic Pro 9 and Main Stage 2 when running in 64-bit mode
* improve sleep and wake reliability when using Bonjour wake on demand
* address a color issue in iMovie with HD content
* improve printing reliability
* resolve issues with recurring events in iCal when connected to an Exchange server
* improve the reliability of 3rd party USB input devices
* fix glowing, stuck, or dark pixels when viewing video from the iMac (Late 2009) built-in iSight camera

Looking through the full list of improvements I noticed a couple of Airport updates:

* general reliability for wireless connections.
* improvements to 802.1X reliability, including closed network connections, and WPA2.

These really caught my eye since there’s been a sizable amount of people (including myself and other OS X Daily writers) that have had various problems with Snow Leopard and wireless connectivity. I’m hoping these will help fix the dropped wireless connection problems in Snow Leopard completely.

You can see the full improvement and bug fix list at Apple.com’s 10.6.3 knowledge base article.

If you are having problems with airport connectivity, try this simple fix for wireless dropping after installing the 10.6.3 update

“[Name] is an application downloaded from the internet. Are you sure you want to open it?”

Starting in new-ish versions of Mac OS X, you may have noticed that when you download a file from the web and go to open it, you will get a prompt saying something along these lines, warning that an application has been downloaded from the internet, and asking to confirm if you actually want to open it or not.

This is Mac OS X just being safe, which is generally a good thing for most users, but if you always know for sure what you’re downloading it could even be overly safe. For users who wish to stop those messages, you can turn off that warning dialog by turning to the command line and a defaults write string. We’ll show you how to turn this off (and back on) if you don’t want that message to appear.

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Here’s a random fact of the day: Steve Jobs drives a Mercedes SL55 AMG, with no license plates. Instead there’s just a plate frame with a little barcode in the middle (apparently the bar code is standard on Mercedes). I guess Steve really doesn’t like the look of the license plate, his car has been spotted frequently around the Silicon Valley and for at least two years now it has been missing the front and rear plates. Failure to display license plates is a $250 fine in California, which makes you wonder how often he gets pulled over and ticketed for the infraction.

[ via Flickr 1 Flickr 2 & Gizmodo ]

Want to have a Mac read text in a document or webpage to you? Text To Speech is an excellent feature which allows Mac users to have words on screen spoken aloud. You can make your Mac talk to you in various different ways, at different speeds, and even speaking with different voices, all by using the powerful built-in Text-to-Speech abilities of Mac OS X. With this feature, you can either speak a few words, phrases, or even an entire document.

We’ll cover the two quickest and easiest ways to use Text to Speech on a Mac from common apps like word processors, web browsers, and text editors, and also demonstrate the command line ‘say’ trick to speak text by way of the Terminal application. Finally, we’ll also show you how to change the voices used, and the rate of speech (meaning, how fast the words are spoken).

Read more »

Want to play Team Fortress 2, Half-Life, Counterstrike, and some of the other sweet Valve games on your Mac? Apply to be an official beta tester for the upcoming Mac version of Steam. It’s a simple questionnaire that goes through your computing setup and gaming habits, and then you provide a copy of your System Profile information. Beyond randomness (or luck), it seems who gets chosen to download the beta client is based on Valve’s hardware testing needs.

A user on TUAW claims to have applied and received a very quick response with an approval, writing the following in the comments:

Wow..that was quick…I just entered my application and they emailed me back code to get mac version of steam client….within hours of entering !! this is like christmas..I’m going to test out some team fortress !!

Why not give it a go yourself? Head on over to Steam’s Mac beta signup site:

Steam: Mac Beta signup

You’ll need a Steam login to apply, which suggests a preference to those who already own and use Steam, ie: PC & Mac users.

[ via TUAW ]

A classic setup: a MacBook Pro and an iMac. This setup is extra awesome because the owner of the machines was viewing OS X Daily when he took the picture, cool!

[ via Flickr ]