MacTricksAndTips.com

I seem to be repairing quite a few out of warranty Mac’s over the last month. I’m not particularly adept at fixing Mac’s, i’ve never been on a course, however people I talk to never believe how simple sometimes it is to fix a Mac. They always think they have a million parts, requires a soldering iron (never needed to use one yet) or you need a PhD in fixing computers to Mac them work again. This isn’t always the case. Most of the time, with the right guide, a little bit of patience, you can fix your own Mac, even the fiddly bits. Once you have all of the parts you can have your computer working within the hour. This mini guide is a list of things I have compiled to help you get your Mac working again.

Today’s post is going to show you how to install Xcode. This post is for people who are new to the Mac and want to try there hand at programming. The Xcode developer tools allow anyone to create Mac applications (as well as other cool stuff). I have recently begun learning the application and how to program for Mac over the last couple of weeks, as a result it seemed a good post.Xcode isn’t normally found on your Mac, so people who don’t know how to install it may find the process a little confusing.

Usenet goes back. Way back. Its one of the oldest and most popular protocols on the internet. In a nutshell, Usenet is a service which allows you to access articles post by people like you and me over the internet. Since this information is spread world wide and most importantly it is the same, you can access a bustling community of enthusiasts (of every kind) in a quick and easy manner. I wanted to bring up how to access Usenet because there is a large community of Mac users using the service, which is great for learning new things and asking your questions. I have done a post previously on this site about accessing Usenet, but I am going to updated version here with more detail, as a request from one of you guys who contacted me.

A few months ago I mentioned about Taking Time Lapsed Screen Shots With Terminal, it was a script which would take a screen shot every couple of seconds of your desktop. This is useful if you are taking a time lapse movie, but it is not useful if you actually want to show people videos of your desktop. I have previously written a post on iShowU which can take movies of you desktop. This post will show you how you can do this for free using QuickTime Player which comes with Snow Leopard.

Over the past two weeks I have mentioned many times about making a Terminal script into a Service. This post is going to be a round up of some of the small quirks I have found and worked around. You can use this post as a may of booking this method if you forget how to do this in the future. In essence it will take any Terminal Bash script which you have made and would normally run in Terminal and apply a short cut. I’m finding this more and more useful as time goes on. I have a small growing list of scripts that I run on a daily basis.

I did a post a while back about Resizing Images using Apple Script. Its an old post, however it does have some good points. For people who don’t know how to use AppleScript it can be a bit complicated. This post is going to show you how your can batch resize images using Preview (which has slowly become more powerful) and then move this into an Automator script. Its a good simple way to resize images and is quick and simple.

I use Windows semi-regularly to play PC games, when booting into Windows with Boot Camp, I normally have to restart as normal, wait for the main screen to pop up, press Option, restart my Mac again because I forgot to press option, select my Windows hard drive and boot up as normal. This takes far too long and in the boot time I would rather get a drink than wait to select the correct drive. So I went on a quest last night to find a simple one click solution to reboot, automatically into Windows. I wanted a solution where I click an icon and my Mac restarts, avoiding an option to enter my password. As you will find out this is a lot harder than you would think. There is three solutions that do work each with varying results. These are a Terminal command /script. An AppleScript and an Application someone has designed.

The title is a bit complicated for what I am trying to achieve in this post. What I am going to cover is a way of upgrading your Mac’s internal Hard Disk Drive and then use this drive externally. I gained the idea from generally searching questions on the net, and from what I did quite a while ago. By the end of this you should a bigger capacity drive in your Mac, and an external Hard Drive to use for extra storage.