Bonjour is a great service that runs in the background of your Mac to auto-discover network resources, that is, it’s great until mDNSResponder goes haywire. I was recently in a very creatively crafted network environment that made Bonjour absolutely freak out and tax my CPU with a million processes, so I opted to just disable the service temporarily.

Generally speaking you should leave Bonjour enabled since it’s functionality is ubiquitously used throughout Mac OS X, but if you DO want to disable mDNSResponder, here’s how to do it:

Read more »

Ever wondered what the ‘mdworker’ process was on a Mac? mdworker is short for ‘metadata server worker’ and if you’re still confused don’t feel bad. mdworker is basically the core technology behind Mac OS X’s awesome search engine Spotlight, it spiders meta data from your Mac and its files and creates a readable index so that you can find things practically instantaneously via Spotlight (command-spacebar).

We’ll cover some common questions and answers regarding mdworker on Mac, inspired by my recent switcher friend who arrived at the Mac OS platform from the other side, who tweeted me asking why mdworker is taking up so much CPU.

Read more »

Squid is a web caching proxy that is wildly useful for those of us on slower internet connections or anyone that has reduced bandwidth availability, it reduces bandwidth by caching and reusing frequently accessed web pages and works with http and https. Squid has been particularly useful to me on business visits to places where broadband is a distant concept rather than the norm, it really makes the web usable in challengingly slow internet environments. Squid Manager is a nifty manager to use the Squid web caching proxy on your Mac, so if you’re in the market to use Squid on your Mac, be sure to check out Squid Manager.

Download Squid Manager now
Developer home

Every once in a while you stumble upon a Mac utility, app, or feature that you immediately fall in love with and wonder how you ever live without… well today and for me, that is iStat Menu.

iStats Menu has been around a while, but apparently I’ve neglected it to my own detriment because this thing is awesome.

Installing is a breeze and it becomes a System Preference pane, where you can adjust settings to monitor everything from the temperatures in your Mac, to CPU activity, disk space, bandwidth usage, and oh so much more.

If you ask me, this is an absolute must download for Mac geeks, so check it out!

iStats is highly configurable, so if monitoring system resources appeals to you then check it out.

Update: iStats was free for a while and a trial can still be downloaded for free, along with a full featured paid version. However, you can still download the free version of iStats Menu and get those features on older versions of Mac OS X.

Need a super easy and simple Stopwatch on the Mac, but don’t want to download anything like a third party app or utility? Look no further than the command line.

You can create an instant quick and dirty stopwatch via the Mac OS X (or linux) command line by launching the Terminal app and typing a simple command string.

Read more »

Need a PDF Editor for Mac? I did too, and this is what I learned. Adobe Acrobat Pro is great software with some killer features, but it’s expensive. Acrobat is hard to beat in it’s functionality, but if all you’re looking to do is make small changes and edits to PDF files, spending $350 for a PDF Editor might be a bit overkill. So what are some other options for a Mac PDF Editor?

Best Free PDF editor for Mac

Preview – FREE – included in every Mac OS X install, the most recent version of Preview in Snow Leopard lets you make all sorts of annotations to PDF documents. In the Snow Leopard version, you can draw shapes onto PDF’s, and write text directly to PDF files for things like a digital signature. It’s basically a limited PDF editor, for free, and there’s no download required! If you’re looking for a free PDF editor solution, I highly recommend just using Preview.app that is already included in Snow Leopard!

Other Free PDF Editors for Mac

Skim – FREE – we’ve written about Skim before, and it works pretty well for making quick notes to PDF documents.

Scribus – FREE – an open source desktop publishing app that has limited PDF editing abilities, and the ability to create your own PDF’s

Best Paid Solution for Editing a PDF on Mac

I say this is a tie because PDFPen is great but a lot more limited than Acrobat, but if you’re just looking to make simple changes, save yourself $300 and buy PDFPen. If you’re a professional and you are going for advanced PDF editing and production features, get Acrobat, it’s expensive but there’s a reason: it’s extremely powerful.

PDFPen -$49.95 – a whole lot cheaper than Adobe Acrobat, with much of the same functionality in terms of making quick text edits to PDF files and the ability to edit faxes, OCR files, and more.

Adobe Acrobat Professional 9 – $350 – the grand daddy of all PDF editors, you’ll pay a fortune for it, but if you’re really serious about creating, editing, and modifying PDF’s this is the best way to go. There is an upcoming version X (10) too that will have even more powerful features.

If you’ve looking for the location of your iPhone Backup files in the file system of a computer, then you’ll be pleased to know they’re easy to find even if a bit hidden. Whether you use Mac OS X or Windows, the iPhone backup process is basically the same; iTunes backs up all of your iPhone files, pictures, media, and identifier information to a specific directory on the computer, which iTunes then uses in the future to restore and sync the iOS device.

We’ll point you to the proper directory locations of iPhone and iPad backup files on a Mac or Windows… but do note that you should not mess with these iPhone backup files unless you know what you’re doing and why.

Read more »

Burning an ISO in Mac OS X is very easy thanks to the built-in Disk Utility application that is included from Apple on every Mac. With Disk Utility being bundled with Macs directly from Apple, it also has the huge added bonus of being free, and although there are plenty of paid options out there, why buy something new or install new apps if you don’t need to? With that in mind, here’s how to use Disk Utility to Burn an ISO image onto a disc using just your Mac, and completely for free.

Read more »

The new version of the Remote app for iPhone [iTunes link] has a great social feature that allows party guests with the app installed to connect to iTunes shares, see what’s currently playing, add songs to playlists, vote on songs to be played, and make requests.

As the linked posterous blog states: “This is the future of the juke box. The democratization of music wherever you are.”

How cool is this for iPhone party goers? It’s only a matter of time before this makes its way into bars, lounges, and nightclubs.

Check out more here: Sachin@Posterous: At your next party, use iTunes DJ to let *your guests* pick what music is played and vote on the next song

[iPhone image borrowed from above posterous link, it’s not my Britney Spears playlist, I swear]

iTunesHelper or iTunes Helper, is a program from Apple that runs in the background and monitors for the connection of any iPod or iPhone to the computer, if an iPod or iPhone is detected it will automatically launch the iTunes application. The functionality is the same on both Mac OS X and Windows PC’s, and there is no serious ramification to disabling it (other than that iTunes will no longer auto-launch upon connecting your iPhone or iPod).

Disable iTunes Helper in Mac OS X

iTunesHelper.app is autoloaded during system boot in Mac OS X, but if you’re having problems with the iTunesHelper app you can easily disable this from auto-loading by going to System Preferences -> Users -> Login Items, clicking on the iTunesHelper application and then clicking on the minus (-) button at the bottom of the list (thanks Gord!). Unselecting the checkbox next to iTunesHelper application hides it during system launch, as seen in this screenshot:

Disable iTunes Helper in Windows

Go to Start Menu -> Run, type in ‘msconfig.exe’ and hit enter. A system configuration utility will pop up and click the “Startup” tab, from there navigate to iTunesHelper.exe and disable it by unselecting the checkbox next to the app name.

Why you would want to disable iTunes Helper

Sometimes iTunesHelper freaks out and causes system hangs, CPU drain, and other frustrating problems. Otherwise, you may just not want iTunes to automatically launch if you connect an iPod or iPhone, you can disable that setting within the iTunes settings, or you can disable iTunesHelper itself. My cousin was recently having all sorts of problems with the actual iTunesHelper daemon running in the background, so I helped him disable it completely, and his problems were resolved.

By default, Mac OS X Snow Leopard boots using a 32 bit kernel. But did you know you can switch between the 64-bit kernel and 32-bit kernel upon boot?

This should be useful to advanced users who may need to perform such a feet, though the average Mac use likely has no business forcing one kernel to load over another.

So, let’s cover how to do it:
Read more »

Do you need iPhone Insurance? For such an expensive phone, I think the answer is yes. iPhone Insurance is not really something I thought of, and I’m guessing something that most users don’t think of until it’s too late and you actually need it. After several of my friends accidentally broke, lost, or otherwise rendered their iPhone’s unusable, I got a bit more curious about iPhone specific insurance options. This list is by no means complete but it’s just what I discovered in my research for insuring the device.

iPhone Insurance Options

AT&T Wireless Insurance – this is tacked onto your regular monthly iPhone service bill at the rate of $13.99/month. Your iPhone will be insured directly through AT&T. There’s a $99-$199 deductible though, so keep that in mind, it may be just as expensive to renew your contract with AT&T for that price. Note: You need to call AT&T to verify this!

State Farm – the cost for State Farm to cover your iPhone (and Mac, might as well cover them both right?) is pretty cheap but vary from region to region. According to CNET, the yearly cost of their plan that covered their Mac and iPhone was $35. That figure should serve as a baseline, and not a rule. The deductible for the plan varies based on what your premium is. Note: commenters point out that some State Farm agencies will not cover the iPhone, this seems to be on a state by state basis, you’ll have to call your agent to know for sure.

Other iPhone Insurance Providers – there’s a slew of insurance providers out there but whether or not they will cover your iPhone is another story. Your best bet is to call your local insurance company and ask them questions specifically about iPhone coverage. I contacted my Home Owners provider and they said my iPhone and Mac are already covered by my existing policy, but, there’s a $500 deductible per incident! The high deductible obviously makes relying on this insurance pointless for just the iPhone, but they did offer to have a lower overall deductible for a considerable amount more per year – not even close to worth it in my case, I’d have to lose 3 iPhones a year just to break even.

Readers Suggestions – I have no experience with SquareTrade but apparently they offer iPhone Insurance too, please do your own due diligence to determine if the iPhone plans they offer are right for you. Additionally, Best Buy offers iPhone Insurance through their Geek Squad service (thanks reader Mike!) but apparently they are expensive.

The bottom line is if you’re trying to insure your iPhone the best bet is to just call around and see who has the best rate, just be sure to check on deductibles and limitations. You don’t want to buy an insurance plan for your iPhone only to find out it’s not covering accidental damage or has a large deductible. Hopefully none of us will actually need (or wished we had) insurance for our iPhones, but should the case arise, it’s good to be prepared right?

Last week we wrote that some people thought of Snow Leopard as a disappointing upgrade because there wasn’t a new GUI included in it, specifically the ‘marble’ interface that has been speculated to exist for a while now. Those of us that have installed iTunes 9 may have noticed that the new iTunes application features a refined, shinier, and more modern looking GUI coating. Is this a sign of things to come for Mac OS X? I think it looks pretty sharp, so I certainly hope so. Until Apple releases a GUI update, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before a third party creates an app to spread the new iTunes 9 interface across the Mac OS X Finder, much like the Uno app did prior to 10.5. What do you think?

In case you somehow missed the news today, Apple has released iTunes 9 available immediately for download, and iPhone OS 3.1 for the iPhone and iPod Touch, also available now. Both updates seem worthwhile and right in line with what the Apple Rumor Mill has been suspecting, although they don’t add anything jaw-dropping in terms of new functionality or features, there’s a bunch of bug fixes and small feature additions and improvements. iTunes 9 wasn’t showing up under Software Update for me so I just downloaded it manually from Apple via the iTunes download website.

iPhone OS 3.1 updates

– iTunes U content organization
– Redeem iTunes Gift Cards, codes, and certificates in the App Store
– Display available iTunes account credits in the App Store and iTunes Store
– Save video from Mail and MMS into Camera Roll
– Option to “Save as new clip” when trimming a video on iPhone 3GS
– Use Voice Control on iPhone 3GS with Bluetooth headsets
– Paste phone numbers into the keypad
– Warn when visiting fraudulent websites in Safari (anti-phishing)

iTunes 9 updates

– iPhone / iPod Touch App organization and synching of home screen
– New Media Syncing options
– Better Genius Mixes
– Twitter and Facebook connectivity & sharing

via Twitter: AppleTwitts and MacRumors.com

Have you ever needed to convert a DMG file to ISO in Mac OS, or wanted to convert an ISO file to DMG on your Mac?

Converting image files on your Mac is easy thanks to a command line utility included in Mac OS X called hdiutil.

Read more »

So you want a small lightweight portable Mac OS X machine, the closest thing Apple has in this area is the MacBook Air which is $1600 or more. No doubt about it, the MacBook Air is a great machine but I don’t want to spend anywhere near $1600 for another laptop when I already have a MacBook Pro. I’m thinking a small budget, like really small by Mac standards, how about $250 or less? Impossible you say? Wrong! It’s possible and I did it! Here’s how you can too. Be warned, this is not sanctioned by Apple, and it’s breaking the Mac OS X EULA agreement.

What You Will Need

* $200-$250, expenses vary based on your particular model, coupon code, and luck at the Dell Outlet
* 8gb USB key or external USB hard drive you don’t mind formatting
* Mac OS X 10.5 install DVD or image
* some patience

Finding a Cheap Dell Mini 10v for Hackintosh Purposes

So now you need to find the cheap Dell Mini 10v, the refurbs from Dell Outlet serve this purpose wonderfully. Combined with a discount code from the DellOutlet Twitter, and you have yourself a very affordable Hackintosh. My final price was $204 shipped!

Twitter: DellOutlet – follow DellOutlet on Twitter to get product discount codes, I got one for 15% off from here. They pop up once a week or so and have a limited duration.

Dell.com/Outlet – Mini 10v – check stock and sort by price, it’s a live search so you can constantly refresh it and see different stock from other people dumping their carts. I have seen a Mini 10v for as low as $219 BEFORE using the 15% coupon!

Hackintosh: Installing Mac OS X on the Dell Mini 10v

Gizmodo Guide to install Snow Leopard on the Dell Mini 10v – this is based on the information from MyDellMini forums but it’s made a bit easier to follow and has some nice pictures of progress. If you want to install Snow Leopard on your Mini 10v, this is a great guide to follow.

MyDellMini: Fool Proof No Hassle Mini 10v Install Guide – Fellow OS X Daily author Bill Ellis wrote about theHackintosh Dell Mini 10v several weeks ago, which is what first perked my interest in the topic. I followed the guide he suggested, it works, just follow the steps carefully and it will work for you too.

Upgrades, Troubleshooting, and more

MyDellMini – Install 2GB RAM Upgrade on Dell 10v – I followed the videos here to upgrade the memory. Ok I admit, the RAM upgrade was a total pain, but OS X smokes with 2gb of ram on the Mini 10v so if you’re technically competent and have the patience, it’s the best $19 you’ll have spent in a while. For what it’s worth, OS X runs just fine with only 1GB of RAM but you will see a noticeable speed bump with the 2GB upgrade.

MyDellMini Forums – this is a wildly helpful bunch of people that are quick to help and extremely knowledgeable on the topic, if you have any questions or run into problems at all, this is probably the best place to go.

MyDellMini Forums: Snow Leopard – Now that Snow Leopard is out I’d love to get it running on my little Hackintosh, but I’m going to wait until the process is a bit more streamlined before attempting this. If you follow the MyDellMini forums though, you’ll see many people have successfully installed it already, it’s just a bit complicated. I imagine the Hackintosh community will sort this out pretty soon, it’s a smart group.

Final Thoughts on Hackintosh

Considering how vibrant the Hackintosh community is, particularly focused on Netbooks, I think it points to a hole in Apple’s current product line: a cheap, lightweight, super-portable Mac. Until Apple fills this niche with something (the rumored Mac Tablet, or whatever), I’ll bet the Hackintosh community continues to grow, especially when people are pinching pennies in a recessionary economy. Hopefully Apple steps up and delivers, an Official Mac Netbook or equivalent would be awesome and I would buy one!

Apple certainly means well with the Software Updates, but sometimes I get update notifications I just don’t care about, or just don’t want to install for whatever reason. If you’re in this situation and you have a version of OS X before the App Store that ran exclusively in a native Software Update window, like Snow Leopard and prior, you can easily ignore those software update packages to stop having them show up. (Yes you can ignore Mac App Store updates too, here’s how).

Read more »

Ever wanted to know if your Mac is using a 32-bit or 64-bit kernel? It may seem geeky and in the weeds, but it’s now relevant. Snow Leopard 10.6 is the first Mac OS X version to ship with a 64 bit kernel, and obviously your Mac has to have a 64 bit processor to utilize that kernel, but some 64 bit Mac’s are not defaulting to the 64 bit kernel.

So how do you know which kernel version your machine is using? How do you know if you’re running 32 bit or 64 bit Mac OS X? Well, there’s a simple command to determine if you are using a 32 bit kernel or a 64 bit kernel and the command is actually the same for both, it’s the output that will tell you which kernel version you are using.

Read more »