Your Startup Disk Is Almost Full - But not for long!

I've seen the same issue on 3 different MacBooks in the past week, a computer that basically ceases to function due to a completely filled hard drive. Your computer needs free space (aka headspace) to be able to 'think', room to place the data while it's busy computing. The original MacBooks shipped with hard drives as small as 60 GB and up to 120 or 160 GB, which at the time was a fairly decent size considering the proportions of the files it was using. iTunes libraries have expanded, cameras have increased their pixel resolutions and people are downloading movies at a rampant pace, leading to the problem of lack of storage. 

Luckily there's no reason not to keep that computer on the info super-highway, and the fix is cheap and easy. There are two ways to mitigate this problem, either by upgrading the internal hard drive or by using an external drive to store your files. The former is my preferred method and a 500 GB internal drive can be yours in less than 24 hours and for a cost of around $225.00, complete with a restoration of your old data onto the new drive.

The latter is just as easy and can be as cheap as $100-$150 for a 500 GB or 1 TB drive. Make sure you format the drive using Disk Utility as Mac OS Extended, since your MacBook can communicate with the drive right out of the box, but you will likely have problems dragging larger files onto the drive if it's formatted as MS DOS FAT. Drag your movie files and other large folders directly onto the drive and erase them off your internal disk to free up headspace. If you have a substantial iTunes library you can use the external drive as the source of your music files, same goes with iPhoto and your iMovie media files. You can continue to use the external drive as your Time Machine backup (also highly recommended).

Times are tight and most people don't have the budget to buy a brand new computer every time their older machine fills up. This is quick, cheap and easy way to extend the life of your older machine.

Apple Quick Tips Newsletter Vol V

We have to start this newsletter by touching on the recent reports of an Apple computer targetted Trojan 'virus' called Flashback. Flashback reared its ugly head last week and has caused widespread hyperbole and minor panic. It's the first legitimate virus most Mac users have encountered and has resulted in a flood of "I told you sos" from the PC community. So far it has infected over 650,000 computers. Evidently this piece of malware poses as a Flash installation tool. Upon infection the trojan targets specific webpages, modifying them with the intent of committing pay-per-click fraud.

If you're running Lion 10.7.3 or Snow Leopard 10.6.8 you are not in any danger. Apple has already released a patch that fixes the hole in the Java application, and if you do a simple software update you will have no problems with this Trojan. Apple has also announced that it will release a removal tool in the next few days.

For Macs running Mac OS X v10.5 or earlier you can protect yourself by disabling Java in your web browser's preferences.

For anyone confident with using the Terminal command line interface, you can check for the existence of the virus (and remove it if it is there) F-Secure has posted the instructions here, and recently added a more user-friendly detection tool. Feel free to contact me for more information.

Now on to the tips.

iTunes Home Sharing. This is one of my favourite features in iTunes, perfect for a home with multiple computers, mobile devices and iTunes libraries. Simply go to the advanced tab in your iTunes menu bar, turn on Home Sharing using your Apple ID and do the same for all your devices. You can find the control in your Music settings of your iPhone and iPad. Once Home Sharing is on you can access all the music and other files in any of your iTunes libraries from any of your devices.


Creating Multiple iPhoto Databases As our iPhoto libraries continue to grow, thus gobbling up computer space and speed, it can become necessary to run multiple iPhoto libraries, for example a working library, an archived library, or a topic-specific library. You'll probably want to export photos from your main library to add to the new library, then close the iPhoto progra. Now hold down the Option key while re-opening. You're given a dialogue that will allow you to either create a new library or toggle between your existing libraries. Give the new library a name and then import the selected photos into your new library.

Four Favourite iPhone Apps
Everlight Free - A flashlight app right on your phone.
Remote - Allows you to control your iTunes library or Apple TV from your phone
Shazam - This app is for music lovers, it will help identify untitled songs in your iTunes library or on the radio.
Dragon Dictation - Records your voice and transposes it into text. Actually works.

Notice of telephone phishing scam directed at Apple users.

Notice of a telephone phishing scam directed at Apple users, a client of mine was just called by someone with an accent claiming to be from Apple, that her emails were being compromised, and directing her to go to her computer, open Safari and start typing. She asked to speak to his manager and the line went dead.

More than likely they're trying to sell some kind of bogus security software with the aim of obtaining your credit card number or other personal information.

Be aware, Apple would and will never phone you for any reason, especially to discuss sensitive security issues regarding your computer. Either collect the number off your call display and forward it to the RCMP, or simply invite the caller to go pound sand and carry on with your day. DO NOT buy any software from these scammers.