Geek Guides

Use QuickBoot to restart with Windows and Boot Camp

Jules — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 11:34:36 +0000

QuickBoot is a free utility that fixes that annoying problem of forgetting to hold down the Alt key when you restart your Mac to boot into Windows via Boot Camp. It sits in the menu bar and let’s you restart your Mac and boot into Windows with a mouse click. The utility is a bit like [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

Use QuickBoot to restart with Windows and Boot Camp

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 to [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

How to hide the Genre column in iTunes 9

Samsung ML-1510 laser printer incompatible with Snow Leopard

Jules — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 12:23:20 +0000

This is just a heads up if you can’t get your Samsung ML-1510 laser printer to work with Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard. The current Samsung driver for Mac OS 10.3 doesn’t work with Snow Leopard and Samsung’s advice to reinstall the 10.5 driver isn’t much use — there is no 10.5 driver. With regard to [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

Samsung ML-1510 laser printer incompatible with Snow Leopard

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 works [...]

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 of [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

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

Two useful keyboard shortcuts for Firefox

Jules — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:17:53 +0000

These are very old news (I’m sure), but I’ve just stumbled upon two useful keyboard shortcuts for Firefox. ⌘ + L — jump to and select (ready for overtyping) the contents of the location box. ⌘ + K — jump to and select (ready for overtyping) the contents of the search box. In other words, you don’t need [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

Two useful keyboard shortcuts for 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, looking [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

How to change the ‘Today’ highlight colour in iCal

Move windows around on a Mac with keyboard shortcuts and SizeUp

Jules — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:45:22 +0000

Some utilities fill their niche so well that they quickly become an indispensable part of your daily computer use and SizeUp is one program that falls into that category for me. The concept is simple enough — this tiny program (4.1Mb) lets you resize and position windows on the Mac OS Desktop using keyboard shortcuts — [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

Move windows around on a Mac with keyboard shortcuts and SizeUp

Keyboard shortcuts for rating iTunes songs

Jules — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 10:09:04 +0000

I’m on the hunt for a good Mac to-do list/GTD manager and while I’ve yet to settle on one of the multitude that are available, the search did lead me to a handy utility I’ve been looking for for ages. It’s called I Love Stars and it puts an iTunes star rating tool in the [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

Keyboard shortcuts for rating iTunes songs

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

Hands-on with the Palm Pre

Jules — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:55:15 +0000

I’ve been sitting on this hands-on video of the Palm Pre for a week or so now, since I don’t have a suitable site to post it to at the moment. So although it’s not the kind of thing I’d normally post here, I thought I’d upload the video anyway rather than let it sit [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

Hands-on with the Palm Pre

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 only [...]

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, say) [...]

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 backups [...]

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

Safari 4 beta bug with WordPress 2.7

Jules — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 04:53:24 +0000

The new Safari 4 beta is pretty good, as long as you’re happy with a browser that lacks most of the features that have been standard on the competition for some years (ad-blocking and saved sessions, to name but two). It is a beta though, so it’s bound to be buggy — and I’ve just [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

Safari 4 beta bug with WordPress 2.7

Remote Desktop made easy with CrossLoop

Jules — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 16:00:45 +0000

Setting up remote Desktop access is usually something you wish you’d done just after you realise you need to take control of a remote computer – like when you’re called upon to fix a distant friend or family member’s PC, for example. Taking control of a remote computer is straightforward if you can get physical access [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

Remote Desktop made easy with CrossLoop

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 into [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

How to enable hibernate mode on a Mac

How to make the Home & End keys on a Mac keyboard work like Home & End keys

Jules — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:10:56 +0000

When you press the cursor keys, modified cursor keys (with [Shift], [Ctrl], and so on) or [Home] and [End] keys on a Windows PC, the on-screen cursor reacts in a consistent way when it’s in a block of text, no matter what application you’re using. Its behaviour is controlled at operating system level rather than [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

How to make the Home & End keys on a Mac keyboard work like Home & End keys

How to sync Google Contacts and Calendar with the iPhone using Google Mobile Sync

Jules — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:24:55 +0000

Google now offers its own ExchangeSync service for smartphones called Google Sync for Mobile, which means you now now automatically synchronise your Google Account data with your handheld over Wi-Fi or a mobile data connection. If you’re an iPhone or iPod Touch owner, this means you can now synchronise your Google Calendar and Contacts data with [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

How to sync Google Contacts and Calendar with the iPhone using Google Mobile Sync

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 your [...]

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 [...]

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] (depending [...]

Originally published at Geek Guides

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