The Mac Admin's Blog

The very first shipment of iPads are sold out with great success. Good job Steve. It is a rumor that around half a million iPads were brought to market which are sold out and the next order that was supposed to be delivered on 3rd of April has been moved to 11th April. It was a great success for Steve as there are many competitors in market now. HP and MSI has well planned to launch similar devices and there are many more brands in the run. When mashable released the post about iPad alternatives the readers across the world started questioning the success of iPad but the latest response from the market shows there is no competition for Apple.

Courtsey: Cnet.com If you are experiencing issues with any of the iLife applications included with your Mac (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand, or iWeb), you can take these basic steps to begin troubleshooting your problem. First thing's first. If you're having problems with one (or all) of your iLife applications, double-check your system against the system requirements for iLife. You can find the minimum requirements for iLife '09 here , or on the retail box. Note that though your machine may meet the minimum system requirements, some applications (or features of applications), like GarageBand and iMovie, require higher system specs. Once you have determined that your machine meets the system requirements, be sure you have the latest version of each of your applications. The easiest way to do this is by using Software Update (located by clicking the open apple icon in the menu bar) and checking for any updates. If you're still experiencing issues, you

Here are some additional features which are not so popular while typing text in Mac. Character substitution In OS X Snow Leopard, Apple introduced text substitution. While for the most part it is used for symbols, it can also be used for word substitution. Apple includes a number of default options, such as copyright and trademark symbols, but provides the option to add customized words and other substitutions of your choosing. To set this up, go to the "Language & Text" system preferences, and in the "Text" tab, use the plus button to add new substitution options. In order to use symbols, glyphs, or other nonstandard characters in the substitution, when you are entering the replacement text it might be useful to have the system's "Character Viewer" panel open (available from the input menu) so you can insert desired symbols. Autocompletion One additional composition aid that is available in Snow Leopard is word suggestion, which can be use

In this post we will discuss the steps to change the default length of iCal Events This is going to be a quick tip for any users who regularly use iCal. When you create a new event, either in the day, week or month viewer you will realize that the length of the event is one hour long, for most people this is fine. However if you regularly have meetings which are half an hour long, or book rooms for two ours at a time, it may be beneficial and more efficient to adjust the default meeting time. This means you don’t have to fiddle around with the length slot if you regularly use the same event length. This trick, as many tricks on this site do, uses Terminal. Open it up from Applications > Utilities. Then type or copy and paste, the following and hit enter. defaults write com.apple.iCal 'Default duration in minutes for new event' 15 This will change the default event length to 15 minutes. To see the results re-open iCal if you already have it open. The number at the en

Here are two options to compress the pdf file using Preview application, I hope either one should work for you. Also I would request you to send if there is any other trick which I have not yet discovered. Both of the compression options are found in the Save As menu. First find a large PDF file that you want to shrink, any will do for this example. Go to File > Save As. In the save box there will be two drop down items. The second one is what we are interested in, Quartz Filter. From the drop down menu select none. This may be counter intuitive at first, however it allows the PDF engine to run and reduce any parts that it can. It doesn’t run any other filters. For the most part on an uncompressed PDF this will produce pleasing results. The image below show the drop down box on the Save As menu. The option of having no Quartz Filter for the most part is sufficient. This can reduce the file size. This option is known as loss less, so it wont remove anything at all and keep thi

This method is specially for changing the accessibility of all the files places in one folder. Here are the steps to change read/write access to multiple files placed in the folder. If you like to use Apple terminologies, you can call it as they do it: ‘Changing permissions of all enclosed items’ in a folder. 1. Select the folder and press Command + I to get the info of the folder. 2. It will show the permissions of the current user on that folder. 3. Click on the lock down the bottom and unlock it (it might ask for admin credentials). 4. Once unlocked, click on the drop down next to gear icon (setting icon). 5. Select ‘Apply to enclosed items’ and lock the info. Once done, you should have rights to play with all the files inside the folder. This method is easy and can be in seconds, although if you work at an IT helpdesk like me, make sure that you don’t grant access to application or system files to end uses. I would really don’t like your boss screaming at yo

How to change auto-save or autorecovery interval for Office for Mac applications(Excel, PowerPoint & Word) One of the drawbacks that we all agree about Mac is that it freezes more as compared to PCs. Once it is frozen, you are supposed to do a force quit which is more likely to lose the data. Hence it is necessary that you reduce the autorecovery time to the least possible interval. Here are the steps: (I am taking the example of MS Word for Mac, although the steps are same for all three applications) Launch the application Click on Word menu and go to Preferences From the left column, select Save Now check the option Save auto recovery info every xx minutes Click on OK and the preferences are saved Before I end, I would like to repeat the suggestion by Microsoft, make a habit of Command+S as soon as you take a pause. This will save you from all panics.

Whenever you launch VPN with multiple connection entries, you have to select the one of your choice every time when you try to login. There is an option where, using VPN you can set up default connection entry so that you don’t have to bother about selecting it every time when you login to VPN. This change in your VPN setting is surely going to increase your productivity.  Click on the option ‘Set as Default Connection Entry’

While writing Email if you want to compose it in colorful format, you can try following those steps: Go to ‘Entourage’ menu and select ‘Preferences’ On the left column select ‘Compose’ and it will bring the ‘General’ window Change to HTML/Plain text from the option Mail format.

There are multiple issue that can be fixed just by removing the cache We all are aware of the fact that majority of Mac apps run from a cache. If this cache gets corrupted and isn’t updated it can produce many unexpected errors. If this happens you can delete the cache and then re-launch the application. To delete the cache relating to a program go to /Users/[name]/Library/Caches , find the folder relating to the application and delete it. Make sure the app you want to solve is closed before hand. When you restart the app it should have cleared any problems. Some cache files may also be stored in /Library/Caches , of any hard drive, though you might see such cases once a while. If deleting the app results in any adverse effects (it shouldn’t do), simply close the program and move the cache files back from the Trash into there original location.