The iTunes Syncing Issue…and the Fix
First and foremost, I love iTunes. It has to be one of the (if not the) most used apps on my 27-inch iMac and my 17-inch MacBook Pro. I mean, come on, damn near everyone uses iTunes. In the recent update, however, I have been experiencing issues when enabling the conversion of songs to 128kbps AAC format, which I might add saved over 4GB on my 32GB iPhone, 64GB iPad and 64GB iPod touch. Sacrificing a teeny tiny bit of sound quality saved me all that space on all my iDevices. However, seems like the iTunes software keeps converting the songs after the have already been converted – every time I sync my iPhone, iPod or iPad, making the syncing progress rather long when a typical sync is usually snappy. I thought that I was the only one having this problem until a friend of mind heard me talking to myself asking “I wonder why iTunes keeps doing this?” while I was enjoying my Caramel Macchiato in Starbucks. He mentioned to me that he was experiencing the same issue. On top of that, I recently have been getting a few emails from my friends mentioning the issue.
Repair Your Permissions, Speed Up Your Mac
Over time all our computers start to take a bit of a performance hit, things start to slow down, things just don’t run the way they should. Sometime applications lag and don’t do exactly what they are designed to do. There is a quick fix to all of this which should help speed up a few things. In disk utility there is a the option to repair disk permissions.
Repairing disk permissions goes through and corrects any errors with any permissions, which will make buggy applications correct themselves, and could speed up the overall performance of your mac.
How-To: Monitor your network on your Mac with Wireshark – Snow Leopard Tutorial
Wireshark is an amazing utility that lets you view and analyze captured packet data from your network. It has become a must-have for many institutions and their admins.
It features support for inspection and decryption of literally hundreds of protocols, with more being added constantly. It supports live capture, and also allows you to save, export, and compress data for further analysis later offline. It’s display filters are top notch, as well as it’s UI.
It’s A New Year, Get Organized With Help From Your Mac!
Admit it. If there’s one thing you need to do this year, it’s get organized. 90 percent of all your resolutions and promises will soon fall by the wayside, lost in an endless sea of assignments, work commitments, appointments, travel, and unexpected turmoil. But the Mac you use every day can help you lock down and keep track of your busy life. Here’s 6 tips to help you get started!
5 Great Ideas for iPhone Wallpaper
Everyone loves their iPhone. Whether you’ve gotten one for Christmas, have had one since launch, or are just sporting an iPod Touch, Apple’s pocket portable has quickly become a part of your digital identity. And yet there are so few ways to let your personality shine through to passers-by. Sure ringtones say a lot about who you are, but what about the wallpaper you choose? As soon as you hand someone your iPhone to check out, it’s the first thing they see. Make it count.
If you’re having trouble coming up with an idea for a unique image for stand-by time, look no further as we dream up 5 fresh ideas for iPhone wallpaper. And be sure to check out our comments for even more ideas from our readers!
Five Quick Tips to Speed Up Your Mac
Whether we want it to happen or not, our systems all get a little sluggish from time to time. Sometimes it’s a full hard drive slowing things down. Other times we just simply need more memory for the modern apps than our Mac came installed with. But for all those other times when things just need a quick tweak and tidy? We’ve put together a quick list of five easy steps that should help get your Mac running like it’s factory fresh.
Summarize: A Great Hidden OS X Feature
There have been many times when the PDF document I am reading is just way too long and I have wished that I could just have a “cliffs-notes” version of it. It took me a while to find, but there is actually a wonderful feature hidden inside Mac OS X that allows this to happen by quickly summarizing documents you are reading. The feature is simply called “Summarize“, but it is pretty deeply hidden in the menu bar.
An Extensive Look at the New MacBook Trackpad
One of the coolest things about the new MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air lines is the new multi-touch trackpad. The trackpad is now made of glass and uses the same technology that the iPhone does as far as multi-touch functionality goes. There is no longer a need for a button, as the trackpad itself is a giant button, giving you 39% more room for your fingers on the new trackpad. However, there are some really cool things that you can do with the new trackpad that go way behind just mouse clicks.
Quick Tip: Thread View in Mail.app
Gmail has always had some features that Mail.app does not have. One feature that users of Gmail love is Thread view, which allows you to view and sort messages by thread and not just by title. Well, whether you knew it or not, this feature is also available in Mail.app. To enable it, just go to View > Organize By Thread in Mail.app. From there, if you want to expand all of the threads, just go to View > Expand All Threads. And if you want to contract all of the threads, just go to View > Contract All Threads.
Quick Tip: Using Evernote as a Document Drawer
Obsession, for me, comes in two week streaks. Four weeks ago, I was reading up on my chess strategies and playing games daily over email. Two weeks ago I was into file tagging again, and I wanted to use a tagging system that didn’t rely on a separate application; I ended up using Automator, which has been a solution to a lot of my OS X challenges. This week, I’m into finding a syncing solution for my documents on my iPhone and two desktops. Though it doesn’t serve as a be all end all solution, Evernote has become a great document drawer. Here’s a method of integrating your web browser to drop files into Evernote and save a couple of clicks.
