HKMacs

One of my favourite troubleshooting utilities has just been released for OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

AppleJack 1.6 for Snow Leopard – Mac OS X Hints.

Several sites are reporting that Apple has issued a Knowledge Base article in the Support Forums that notes that some Time Capsules sold between February and June of 2008 are subject to a recall due to the problems described. Should you have a Time Capsule with a serial number in the range XX807XXXXXX – XX814XXXXXX that’s experiencing the dreaded “shutdown and never power up” problem, it’s time to either go to your local Apple Store with the device (after making an appointment at the Genius Bar, of course), visit a local Apple Authorized Service Provider, or to call the Apple Contact Center for your country to find out what to do.

Yesterday I bought a Moshi MiniDisplay Port to HDMI adapter from Sunion in Wanchai, which as far as I know is the only MiniDisplay Port to HDMI adapter that supports audio passthrough from the new MacBook and MacBook Pros. The only problem I have now is that the “underscan” option in the Monitors Control Panel is disabled. I’m pretty sure it was there last week with OS X 10.6.3. Anyone else with the same problem?

Apple has quietly replaced iTunes 9.1.1 with iTunes 9.1.1.12. The new release fixes an issue which affected me among others, in which 128 kbps conversion occured on every sync, meaning that several unchanged songs were needlessly converted and synchronized every time the sync process occurred, resulting in inordinately long sync times.

Unfortunately, the new release is not available (as of yet) through Software Update. To apply the update, you must re-download the new iTunes 9.1.1 installer (which is now version 9.1.1.12) and reinstall it.

A recent post by a friend of mine on Facebook has prompted this post. My friend wrote “Someone has somehow hacked into our emails and sent out fraudulent requests for money! Alerted Yahoo and changed passwords! So, if anyone asks you for money on my account – don’t pay up! I know you won’t anyway!!”

Two things probably happened here to cause this. First you must make sure you use secure encryption for your wireless network. This has nothing to do with the length or complexity of your network password although that is very important. You should never use dictionary words or passwords that can be easily associated with you such as your dog’s name or whatever. Most people coming from the PC world tend to use WEP encryption which is easily hacked. Never mind that the password has to be 13 or more characters. That in itself doesn’t make it secure, it’s the algorithms used in the encryption itself are simple to hack. Use WPA or WPA2 which is far more secure. In Hong Kong if PCCW offer you a wireless setup, their technicians always use WEP. Either insist that they use WPA or set up your own wireless router. Please contact me if you require help on this.

Secondly don’t use Yahoo or Hotmail. They are not secure as passwords are sent in the clear. Use a mail service such as MobileMe or GMail with SSL encryption. In this way your password is sent encrypted and all your communications with the server are secure.

Lastly of course change your passwords regularly.

Boot the Mac while holding down the Option key to get to the boot menu, where the start up drives are displayed. Press and hold down the Eject key on the keyboard, and the stuck disc should eject.

A definitive list of methods for ejecting stuck media can be found here.

I recently had an email from a client as follows:

“I’m having a repeated problem with the Bookmark button in Safari – a few times each day it causes Safari & the Mac to freeze and the spinning coloured circle appears.  This will continue until one does a Force Quit on Safari – once I left it all day and after 6 hours the circle was still spinning and Safari / the Mac frozen.  A friend of mine suggested it might be something to do with disk permissions. I did try this on the Mac’s hard drive and 4 items came up, but not sure what to do after this.  Any ideas?”

I replied as follows:

“Disk permissions are quite likely but you need to get Disk Utility to “Repair Disk Permissions” as opposed to simply “Verify Disk Permissions” otherwise it won’t do anything. If that doesn’t fix it try the following:

From Safari itself in the File menu go to “Reset Safari…”. Check all items except “Remove saved names and passwords” and “Remove other AutoFill form text” and click Reset.

If that fails you should download Onyx and Snow Leopard Cache Cleaner (both on my website) but don’t use the “Download file” link, use the names links to get the latest versions and follow the instructions for each software. No need to pay for either unless you want to as they are both shareware!”