Geek Guides » Apple

iPhone iOS 4 now stores photos in one folder

Jules — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 11:35:11 +0000

Tech blogs have done a pretty good job of drilling down into iOS4’s new features, both big and small, but here’s a very minor one they’ve missed (I think). Until iOS 4, the iPhone stored photos in a seemingly random fashion within any number of folders inside the DCIM folder — a quick check on [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

iPhone iOS 4 now stores photos in one folder

How to hide the Genre column in iTunes 9

Jules — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:20:09 +0000

Apple released iTunes 9 yesterday and along with a bevy of new features, it also put the Genre column back into browser view — and the old trick for hiding it doesn’t work. Fortunately, Apple has evidently listened to our cries of despair and there is now an easier way to disable Genres. Just go [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

How to hide the Genre column in iTunes 9

Why does Disk Utility crash under Snow Leopard?

Jules — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 08:18:06 +0000

I’ve just (thanks Royal Mail!) installed Snow Leopard on my iMac and immediately ran into problems with applications not behaving properly. In some cases, they wouldn’t run at all and crashed upon launch. For example, Activity Monitor reported some apps as using 16,777,216TB of hard disk space (I have no idea which SI unit that [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

Why does Disk Utility crash under Snow Leopard?

Use a three-finger trackpad swipe to scroll to the top & bottom of a page in Firefox

Jules — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 08:24:44 +0000

Here’s another Firefox I discovered the other day. On a MacBook with a multi-touch trackpad, you can use a three finger up/down swipe to move instantly to the top/bottom of a web page. It doesn’t work in Safari, sadly. Originally published at Geek GuidesUse a three-finger trackpad swipe to scroll to the top & bottom [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

Use a three-finger trackpad swipe to scroll to the top & bottom of a page in Firefox

How to change the ‘Today’ highlight colour in iCal

Jules — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:38:40 +0000

I love Mac OS X iCal, but there’s one thing that bugs me — the pale blue highlight that denotes ‘Today’ in the month view is all but invisible. There’s no way to tweak this colour in iCal and the best the internet could suggest was to tilt the monitor back a bit… In fact, [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

How to change the ‘Today’ highlight colour in iCal

How to upgrade a Mac OS Time Machine drive

Jules — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 18:20:57 +0000

Since it’s wholly automatic and completely transparent, it’s silly not to make use of the Mac OS Time Machine utility — as long as you’ve got a large enough external drive for it to work with, of course. I’ve been using it with a 320Gb Seagate FreeAgent Pro external USB drive, but this only gave [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

How to upgrade a Mac OS Time Machine drive

Why your MacBook runs like crap

Jules — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 10:40:57 +0000

I use a MacBook Pro as my my main computer, plugged into a desktop set-up. Like any right-thinking geek with such an arrangement, I removed the laptop’s battery to prevent it suffering from being charged all the time — the MacBook Pro is never used away from mains power and can’t be accidentally unplugged. I [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

Why your MacBook runs like crap

How to swap left and right speaker output in Mac OS X

Jules — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 11:19:41 +0000

My MacBook is set up as a desktop computer — it’s plugged into a Dell 22in LCD monitor (E228WFP) and sits on a fabulous Rain Design mStand so that I can use its screen as a second monitor. I have a pair of Logitech speakers plugged into the MacBook’s headphone socket, but since the MacBook [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

How to swap left and right speaker output in Mac OS X

How to make an external monitor the main display on a MacBook

Jules — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 08:43:28 +0000

Running a dual-monitor set-upon a MacBook is easy enough — just plug in the monitor and go to System Preferences > Displays to configure it. The first thing you’l need to do is click the Arrangment button and drag the external monitor so that it’s position is Displays matches that on your desk — so [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

How to make an external monitor the main display on a MacBook

How to sync an iPhone with two computers

Jules — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 16:11:45 +0000

Unless you’re using over-the-air Microsoft Exchange syncing with your iPhone (via Google Mobile Sync, NuevaSync or a corporate Exchange server), you’re probably keeping its contact and calendar information in sync with Outlook or iCal using iTunes. This works well enough, but what if your calendar and contact data is stored one computer (at the office, [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

How to sync an iPhone with two computers

Safari 4′s hidden preferences

Jules — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:09:26 +0000

The WordPress 2.7 bug makes the Safari 4 beta useless to me, but if you’re a Safari fan who wants to stick with it, but don’t care for the cosmetic changes, head to the Random Genius blog. It has a whole list of hidden preferences for Apple’s new web browser, including one to put the [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

Safari 4′s hidden preferences

Where does iTunes keep its iPhone backups?

Jules — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:57:51 +0000

Whenever an iPhone is synchronised with iTunes, iTunes makes a backup of (most of) the iPhone’s data. You can view the iTunes’ backup history by going to Preferences > Devices. iTunes maintains some kind of history for successive backups, but I have no idea of the underlying logic. You would imagine that three or four [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

Where does iTunes keep its iPhone backups?

Custom keyboard shortcuts in Firefox for Mac OS are broken

Jules — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 05:11:16 +0000

I complained at length about keyboard shortcut inconsistencies in Mac OS X the other day — an OS that’s supposedly ultra-consistent — but it appears that the Apple isn’t wholly to blame. I singled out Firefox and NeoOffice as particular offenders (largely because as a new-ish Mac user, they’re the two apps I use the [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

Custom keyboard shortcuts in Firefox for Mac OS are broken

How to enable hibernate mode on a Mac

Jules — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 18:17:12 +0000

Unlike Windows, Mac OS doesn’t offer a hibernate or deep sleep mode – selecting Sleep from the Apple menu just puts a Mac into a low-power state (suspend to RAM) that, while quick to resume, still keeps the contents of memory in memory. This isn’t much of a problem on a desktop Mac that’s plugged [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

How to enable hibernate mode on a Mac

How to sync multiple iPhone calendars with Google

Jules — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 12:10:10 +0000

If you’ve recently set-up Google Mobile Sync to synchronise your Calendar and Contacts with your iPhone over-the-air, you may have noticed that only one Google Calendar is being synced. It is possible to set-up Google Mobile Sync to sync up to five calendars, though (the maximum the iPhone supports) – you just need to make [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

How to sync multiple iPhone calendars with Google

Backup your iPhone contacts to Google with iTunes

Jules — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 11:34:10 +0000

If you want to use Google Mobile Sync to keep your iPhone synchronised with your Google Calendar and Contacts, you’ll have to backup any existing contacts on your iPhone first, otherwise Google Sync will delete them. Fortunately, there is an easy way to do this and you can use iTunes to upload your contacts to [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

Backup your iPhone contacts to Google with iTunes

How to display a Mac OS character map

Jules — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 09:56:35 +0000

Typing a character that doesn’t have its own key on the keyboard is easy in Windows – you can just use the Windows Character Map tool. Mac OS doesn’t have a similar tool – or rather, it doesn’t have one that’s so easily accessible. There are a few options for quickly inserting symbols like ®, [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

How to display a Mac OS character map

How to hide the Genre column in iTunes 8 for Windows and Mac OS

Jules — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 14:55:13 +0000

iTunes 7 has a Preferences option to turn of the Genre column in the main window, iTunes 8 does not. This is very frustrating. I’m not in the least bit interested in seeing what genres are in my music library, and the Genre pane takes space away from the far more useful Artists and Albums [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

How to hide the Genre column in iTunes 8 for Windows and Mac OS

How to type a hash (#) on a Mac UK keyboard

Jules — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 10:06:46 +0000

Mac keyboards don’t have a # (‘hash’ for the UK, or ‘pound’ if you’re American) key, which is a bit of a problem when you want to type a # symbol. The lack of a dedicated key doesn’t mean you can’t type the symbol, though – just type [Alt] + [3] or [⌥] + [3] [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

How to type a hash (#) on a Mac UK keyboard