It’s inevitable.  Sooner or later, no matter how well you take care of your Mac, you’re going to experience some slow performance and be confronted with the dreaded, spinning pinwheel, also known as the spinning beach ball, sometimes known as the spinning pinwheel of death. No one wants a slow Mac, so here’s this week’s 10 Second Tip for a Happy Healthy Mac.

Let’s look at how to Repair Disk Permissions.

I do this on my own machine at least once a month, and you should too.

NOTE: be sure that you’ve got a recent Time Machine backup before you run this process.

How to Repair Permissions
1.  Launch Disk Utility.

This utility app lives in your Utilities folder, which is inside of your Applications Folder.  The fastest way to get to it is to click on the Spotlight icon at the top right of your screen, and start typing the words Disk Utility.

2.  Next, with the First Aid tab selected, locate and select your System Hard Drive in the list in the left-hand sidebar.

3.  Click on the Repair Disk Permissions button. (See illustration below.)

Just let it do it’s thing, it will take up to 10 – 15 minutes, if you’ve not done this before, or if it has been a long while.

You’ll see a something like this:

Wrapping up

Ideally, you should run this once per month.  And for best results, run it, restart your computer, run it a second time, and then restart your computer again.

You’d be shocked at how many problems this simple routine will fix for you.

For those who would like a more in-depth look at what Unix Permissions are all about, click HERE.

Cheers!

Chris

When Apple releases a product, they have to set the interface in such a way that it’s “fits” a broad range of user ability and experience.  Once you own the product, it’s time to make it “yours” by customizing the way it looks and works.

One cool place to do that is the Finder and Application Toolbars.

To customize the Finder Window Toolbar you either right-click on the toolbar and choose Customize Toolbar or go to the View menu in the Menu Bar (that’s at the top of your screen) and select Customize Toolbar from the drop down menu.

When you do this a drop-down window appears with your Toolbar options. This is from a Finder Window.

The items I think are missing from the Toolbar are New Folder, Delete and Get Info. (Separate Delete from the other Icons with a Space so you don’t click it accidentally.) I also use the Separator to group similar items. Even though the line is very subtle, the eye sees it — thought not consciously — and immediately goes to the right group where I can quickly select the proper Icon.

In Mail, I add Print, Flag, Read/Unread and for some people Smaller/Larger to adjust the Font size of a message from someone that is in a small unreadable font.

In Safari I add Print and Home.

Try this in all the apps you use regularly.  Select the Toolbar Icons for tasks you perform most often and would rather click on, than hunt for through a Menu. You’ll find the quality of your user experience increases as you make the computing environment look and feel however fits your own style best.

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Wyn Matthews is new to the FoleyPod Digital-Life Coach eZine. He comes to us with decades of Mac and PC troubleshooting experience, and is an expert on both systems.

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DO YOU HAVE A QUESTION OF YOUR OWN?
Click on the HELP button at the bottom of the page to submit your own question.

Here’s a great (and brief) article from MacWorld’s Christopher Breen covering what to do when your permissions issues go beyond what your Mac’s built-in Disk Utility software will repair.   While rare, this issue is one I’ve seen before, often when someone is moving from an older version of OSX (like 10.2 Jaguar or 10.3 Panther) to Leopard or Snow Leopard.

This issue is also likely to rear its ugly head when installing a fresh instance of OSX, and creating a new user profile with a different short name than your old one.  Whoops.

[MacWorld] Reader Paul Moortgat’s Mac appears to be unhappy with a new hard drive. He writes:

I replaced the 500GB internal with a 1TB drive in my Mac Pro. I used SuperDuper to copy the disk. Now each time I create a file or a folder on the Desktop and place it on the hard drive icon or trash an item, I’m asked to enter my password. I reset the PRAM and repaired permissions to no avail. How can I get rid of that authentication dialog box?

This is indeed a permissions issue, but it can’t be treated with Disk Utility. And the reason it can’t is because Disk Utility’s Repair Permissions feature repairs permissions only for files installed by OS X, Software Update, or an Apple software installer. It won’t touch your documents, the stuff in your Home folder, or third-party applications.

That said, something definitely got mucked up when you copied your files from your old drive to the new one. What I suggest you do is select one of these files, press Command-I, and in the Sharing & Permissions area of the resulting window, see who “owns” the file. If it’s not you but some other entity, there’s your problem. If you change the permissions so that you own the file, you won’t see the warning.

Continue reading this article HERE at MacWorld.com.

The ability to take a picture of what’s on your computer screen (also called a “screenshot”) is a very handy one.  If you’re a technology or social media blogger, it’s an essential one.

One of the most common reasons for taking a screenshot, in my field, is for my customers to be able to show me the precise error message they’re getting.  Naturally, the more accurate information I have regarding their issues, the faster and more effectively I can solve those issues and get people back up and running.

There are two programs I use for taking screenshots, though there are dozens of them on the market.  The first one comes with your Mac, and I’m going to talk about that one first, because I know people will ask me about it if I don’t.  My recommendation, however, is that you try out the second method, because it’s easier, and fun, and the interface is really well designed and laid out.  (I’m a big sucker for a great user interface.)

First method: Apple’s Grab program.

Mac OSX includes an application called Grab, which lives in the Applications/Utilities folder.  With Grab, there are four ways to take a screenshot:

1.  Selection: With this option you can draw a selection box around whatever portion of your screen you wish to capture.  Only the selected portion will be captured.

2.  Window: With this option, you select only the open window you want to capture, without needing to draw a box around it.

3.  Screen: This option takes a picture of your entire screen, in all its glory, including all visible windows and whatever you might have living on your desktop.

4.  Timed Screen: This option also takes a picture of your entire screen, but allows you to set a countdown, similar to the timer on your camera.  This advanced option will never be utilized by most users, and is useful when you wish to invoke an active menu items that goes away when you move your cursor.  I use this option quite frequently while building websites, to demonstrate page features to a customer.

Perhaps the most simple and direct method of activating Grab’s Selection method without having to open the Grab program, is to use the key-combination: Shift + Command + 4. (⇧⌘4)

Pressing this key combination turns your cursor into a crosshair, which you can use to draw a selector box around the portion of the screen you wish to capture.  When you let go of your mouse, you’ll hear a sound effect like a shutter closing, and the screenshot image will be saved to your desktop.  You can then email this file, or save it to another folder, import it into iPhoto, or edit it in Photoshop.

Second method: TechSmith’s Jing – Author’s Choice

If you’re like me, and you find these four options to be a bit limiting, you might want to check out a nifty FREE program called Jing.  (Check it out HERE.)

Jing is a superb piece of ‘ware, that allows you to take screenshots that you can later annotate with arrows, text, highlights, and other indicators.  Think digital magic marker.

Jing also allows you to take up to 5 minute screencasts (video captures of your screen!) that you can save for later, or send to friends and colleagues.  (I’ll be posting an article about this feature in the very near future, so stay tuned!)

Jing’s description of this feature is pretty fun too:

“Jabber away while pointing at things with your mouse.  Jing records the onscreen action as five minute (or less) movie that can be shared instantly.”

Pretty cool.

The BEST thing about Jing is that it’s cross platform, which means that it is available for Mac OSX and Windows users alike.

Using Jing is so easy, I feel silly even writing about it.  When you launch Jing, it doesn’t appear in your dock, and instead hangs out over on the top right section of your screen, out of the way, until you need it.  (You can move it, if you prefer it to hang out somewhere else.

To invoke Jing, simply hover over it, and it opens up a bit, presenting you with these three options.  It’s entirely self-explanatory.  The top option is a cross-hair, which allows you to draw your selector box, similar to Grab’s option #1 described above.

Once you’ve made your selection, Choose Capture an Image (the first button from the left), and you’re presented with your screenshot inside of this editor window.

You can annotate your screenshot in a blink, and then save it out and send it out.

Thanks for reading!

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DO YOU HAVE A QUESTION OF YOUR OWN?
Click on the HELP button at the bottom of the page to submit your own question.

Time machine is a breeze.  We’ve been a really big fan of Time Machine since before 10.5 Leopard was even available.  Backups used to be really difficult to manage, and restoring from a backup was a task that your average user simply could not do themselves.  With Time Machine, Apple has put more power and peace of mind into the hands of normal users than has ever been available before.

In fact, if you’re new to Time Machine and/or backing up your Mac in general, you may want to have a look at this article from last year.

If you’re running Windows inside of  Parallels or VMWare Fusion, your compressed Windows file is backed up in your Time Machine backup.

But if you’re using Boot Camp — Time Machine only backs up Mac partitions — you need a separate backup procedure.

Here’s how to.

First (and only) decision… Are you going to backup to the same drive as Time Machine or a separate drive?

If you chose separate drives, it’s easy — one formatted Mac and one formatted Windows.

If you’re going to use the same drive, the next step will be to partition your backup disk to make room for your Windows backup. If it’s a new drive, you can create both partitions in Disk Utility (in the Utilities folder… or do a Spotlight search for it), formatting the Time Machine partition Mac OS Extended and the Windows partition Fat32.

If it’s an existing Time Machine backup drive you can resize your Mac partition in Disk Utility and then format the vacated space with Fat32.

Now that your backup drive is ready, you can setup your Windows backup.

• In Windows XP the backup utility can be found in Start-All Programs-Accessories-System Tools.
• In Windows Vista, open Backup and Restore Center by clicking the Start-Control Panel-System and Maintenance.
• In Windows 7 the backup utility is Start-All Programs-Maintenance.

Each utility gives you options on what you want to backup and the location of the backup files. What you backup is your choice, from individual files or folders to the whole Windows installation. Where you backup is going to be your Windows partition on your backup drive.

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Wyn Matthews is new to the FoleyPod Digital-Life Coach eZine. He comes to us with decades of Mac and PC troubleshooting experience, and is an expert on both systems.

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DO YOU HAVE A QUESTION OF YOUR OWN?
Click on the HELP button at the bottom of the page to submit your own question.

I just found out about this great tool from a story over at the LifeHacker website, which I read quite often.

Click through to the original article HERE to download the FREE Adobe Shortcut App.

Here’s an excerpt from the Lifehacker article:

Windows/Mac/Linux: The free Adobe Shortcut App gives fast access to look up keyboard shortcuts for the entire array of Adobe products from one simple place.

Once you’ve installed the Adobe AIR application, you can choose a program from the buttons on the top, and find a shortcut using the search box, browsing, or even adding them to a favorites list. You can switch between viewing Windows or Mac shortcuts, or even view the cheat sheet in PDF format. It’s a quick and easy way to look up the shortcuts without having to pull out the help file. Adobe Shortcut App is a free download for all platforms, requires Adobe AIR.

With the release of Safari 4, Apple has given us some very compelling reasons to stick with Safari as our default web browser.   But perhaps you’re still running OSX 10.3 or 10.4 and can’t get the newest version of the fastest web browser.   Or perhaps you simply prefer to use another browser such as FireFox, Flock, Opera, Camino, or many other available apps made to help you surf online.

Once you’ve chosen your “default” browser, worry not, you won’t find yourself obligated to use only that default browser.  What default browser means is that when you click on a link in an email, or you double-click on a file which forces a browser to open, your Mac will launch that browser to visit the page to which that link refers.

You probably want to set your default browser to be whichever browser you use most often.  This is the one you have stored most of your bookmarks in.  Otherwise, you may find yourself with half of your bookmarks saved in one browser, and the other half in another browser, which can be irritating.  If Safari is your most used browser, you can stop right now, as there’s nothing to change.

Otherwise, here’s how to do it:

Launch Safari. 
Since Safari is set to be your default browser by, um.. default, it is only appropriate that you change this setting from inside of Safari.

• Click on Safari menu, and choose Preferences.

• Choose the General tab at the top of the Preferences Window.

• To the right of “Default web browser” is a drop down menu. Locate your desired application from the drop down menu.

• You’ve now changed your default browser. Quit Safari.

That’s it!

You may be wondering why one might choose to use more than one browser, and the answer is “the right tool for the right job.”   I use a few browsers throughout the course of my workday.  For example:

Safari is my default browser, and I use it for all of my research and to manage my Social Media profiles throughout the day.  Safari is feature-rich and launches in fewer than 2 seconds on my MacBook Pro.

FireFox is my main development browser.   I use it to deal with building web pages, accessing servers, account centers and other professional logins, online banking, etc.  FireFox has historically been more secure than Safari, and besides, I currently have all of my business bookmarks, sensitive passwords and logins stored in FireFox.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for reading.

~ Chris

The most common method of opening a file is to double-click on it, right?  Well what happens when you double click on your file, and it opens in the wrong program, or won’t open at all?

Here’s a real-world example.  You have Microsoft Excel installed on your Mac, but you have Apple’s iWork installed as well.  Someone sends you a spreadsheet file in .xls format, and when you double-click on it, it opens in Numbers.   Uh-oh, you don’t know how to use Numbers.  You were expecting it to open in Excel.  Oh the injustice!

I’ve seen this happen quite often. Adobe .pdf files can open in Adobe Reader, Adobe Acrobat, or Apple’s Preview.  Microsoft Word files can open in Pages, which is great, if that’s what you want.

Sometimes it gets even weirder.   I’ve had Adobe Air files open in Waveburner, which is a pro audio application.  That didn’t make sense at all.

Here’s how to fix this.

To select the default application for a particular file type, click on any file once to highlight it, and then press ⌘ and I at the same time or go to File>Get Info.

From the resulting Info box, click on the Triangle next to Open With to view the Open With dialog section.

Click on the Open with Drop-down menu, and select the appropriate application from the list.

If your desired default application is not listed, click on Other. You’ll be able to select your program. Once you’ve selected your program, click on Change All.

Your Mac will now use your selected program the next time you double-click on this type of file.

Thanks for reading!
~ Chris

This post compliments April’s post about transferring DVD movies to your iPod or iPhone using Handbrake.  If you didn’t read that article, you can view it HERE

What are all these TV Shows doing in my Movies category??  Have you found yourself wondering this?

If you buy your Movies and TV shows from iTunes, the files are automatically placed in their respective categories in your iTunes Library upon download.  Movies goes into the Movies category, and TV Shows will appear in your TV Shows category.

However, if you own TV show collections on DVD, and use Handbrake to import them to your iTunes, they will be filed under Movies, and not under TV Shows.

You may not mind at first, but as you import many seasons of a particular show into iTunes, this starts to get a little irritating.

Here’s how to fix:
Go into your Movies category and locate your TV Show episode.  Click to select.

Now go up to File Menu and select Get Info.

From the resulting pop-up window, navigate to the Options Tab.

Choose TV Show from the Media Kind drop-down menu.  Hit Okay.

Go to your TV Shows menu, and rejoice.

You can also do this with multiple files at once.

Thanks for reading!

~ Chris

Is your Spotlight utility acting wacky lately?

It happens a lot, don’t feel too bad.  If your Mac is in otherwise good working order, it’s likely that Spotlight’s Index file has broken.  You can force Spotlight to re-index your computer’s hard drive in a few short steps.

Here’s how to fix Spotlight:

First, click on the Apple icon at the top left of your screen, and then launch System Preferences.

Next, from the System Preferences window, click on Spotlight.

This next part might seem a little counter-intuitive, but it’s okay, stick with me.
Select the Privacy tab from the Spotlight window.

Normally, this privacy section contains folders that you don’t want Spotlight to look through.  (Click HERE to access an article which describes why you would want to use this function to speed up your Mac.)

For now, click on the + button at the bottom left, and then select your computer’s hard drive from the resulting sidebar, and click Choose.

You’ll notice that your computer’s hard drive now appears in this Privacy list.  Right now, Spotlight is no longer going to access your Hard Drive.  In essence, you have just broken Spotlight, but that’s okay, because now, you’re going to highlight your Hard Drive, and then click on the remove button (-) at the bottom left to remove your Hard Drive from Spotlight’s Privacy list.

Spotlight is now going to RE-Index your Hard Drive, and will delete its old index file.

This could take several minutes.  Once this is done, restart your computer.  Spotlight should be good as new right away.

You can also try this trick with any external hard drives you’re using to increase Spotlight’s search power.

Thanks for reading!

~ Chris