Mac Tips and Tricks

9/29/2004

.Mac new features

The combined storage for your .Mac Mail and iDisk has been increased to 250 MB. Mail now offers email aliases for your account, an online spell checker with a customizable dictionary, and a maximum message size of 10 MB, making it easy to send large attachments. And if you don't use mail that often, you can increase your iDisk storage to do much more by designating the space you need.

Because of the time of year, a lot of the original .Mac accounts are up for renewal. We think these new features, combined with all the other things you can do with a .Mac account, really make it worth the expense of renewal (or starting a new account for that matter). If that's not enough, there's all the extras that Apple offers .Mac members throughout the year.

Learn more about the new features of .Mac Mail and iDisk

9/27/2004

Learning to write Shell Scripts

I hope to get my hands on the book "Wicked Cool Shell Scripts" soon so I can pass on some tips from it. But in the meantime you can go Here to learn more about it and read some sample scripts. It's a pretty cool resource.

9/24/2004

Why good passwords are important

I really can't over emphasize why today's tip on choosing a good password is important, especially if you are using Jaguar or earlier in a shared envirornment. About a year ago when I was doing some research for some Mac OS X security tips I came across several freely available applications that, with a click of a button. would attempt to crack all the passwords on a given machine. I tested one such app on a computer (running Jaguar) at my local community college. I was able to run the program without admin privileges and get the admin password, which was relatively simple, in about 5 minutes. I pointed out this weakness to the tech staff (they are friends of mine) and they changed the the password to a more complex one. Fortunately Panther doesn't seem have this same weakness. I just tested several of these "cracker" applications on Panther and none of them would work without admin privilages. But, to be safe, you should always choose a hard to guess password no matter what OS you are using.

9/23/2004

Java Update

Apple has just released Java Update 1.4.2 Update 2 which it says "provides improved behavior for applets in Safari, and increased stability for desktop Java applications." You can get it via Software Update or from the Apple downloads page.

9/16/2004

Security Update 2004-09-16

Another security update has just been posted by Apple. We're not sure what this one fixes (apparently there is some problem with iChat), but you can get it at Apple Downloads or through the Software update control panel.

9/15/2004

Another site worth mentioning

Focus on Macs at the the about.com site has a lot of useful information without a lot of fluff.

9/14/2004

More useful articles

I've been searching around for Mac articles and here are a few that I came across-

A Simple Guide To Macintosh Security

Mac OS X Panther Applications and Utilities

Mac OS X Panther: Keeping Things Organized

Creating Tables Using Keynote for Mac OS X

Viewing and Navigating Mac OS X Finder Windows

Please feel free to contact us if there are other articles that you would like to bring to our attention.

Security Update 2004-09-07 v.1.1

Apple has released a new version of their latest security update. This version addresses some problems with the original update that had to do with FTP and Safari. Get it at Apple Downloads or through the Software update control panel.

9/13/2004

Capturing Video on your Mac

Just posted on The Intuitive Life Weblog is "everything you need to be able to watch TV on your Mac, capture video onto your hard disk, and even burn DVDs of TV shows, movies, and other archived video material."

9/07/2004

Security Update 2004-09-07

This new security update from Apple addresses a bunch of issues. Find out more about it Here or download and install it through the software update control panel.

9/03/2004

Reading PDFs in Preview

Dave Taylor sent in this tip today-

Reading PDFs becomes infinitely easier in Preview if you select "Continuous Scrolling": then you don't move from page to page, but read an infinitely long "scroll" which allows you to zoom in as much as you desire (good for older eyes). :-)

Thanks Dave! We look forward to getting more tips from you in the future.

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Today's Tip

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