Over the past couple of weeks, I once again reacquainted myself with the joy of using TimeMachine as a backup system. (Please, use more than one, at least one off-site and one on-site would be a good idea, consider CrashPlan for the offsite version, we've used it for years and …

I received a question this afternoon from my cousin about the amount of free flash in her MacBook Air and figured that the answer would probably be useful to others as well. Note that none of this is officially from Apple, so it might be wrong, but I have had …

Many of you have already seen that Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) will be releasing on Friday. I've been running it as my primary OS on my laptop since the WWDC in June and look forward to getting a real install on there. You're probably also aware that PPC …

This is one of those "should have figured that out myself" problems, but I figure I will warn anyone who might be in my shoes.... Check the specifications carefully before investing in an APC UPS. Not that I'm going to suggest going with another manufacturer, just that I'm going to …

With Apple having announced some new machines with really nice price points within the last week, I've been asked by some friends what my suggestions would be for copying the data to a new machine and removing data from the old one. Here, I'll try to put forth my current …

As I write this today, I'm the happy owner of a new MacBook Pro (the "unibody" or "late 2008" version). So, what of it? So far, so great. I'm very happy with the purchase and I'm looking forward to making a happy new Mac user of the designated recipient of …

A little known (but much loved by me) feature of every iPod (except the Shuffle) and the original iPhone was that you could charge the phone using the FireWire port on your computer. Of course, it's been quite a while since you could transfer data over FireWire, but you could …

Some of you know that I run a small fleet of Apple XServes. There are some in two-post racks at the house, and some at our super-secret hosting center in four-post cabinets. We're going to talk about what we've found with rack mount hardware and the older and newer generation …

Many of you Macintosh users out there are concerned for the safety and security of your data. This article will describe how to use the built-in disk image capability of the Macintosh to create a secure file storage location for your important documents. Disk Images are special files that function …

Last year, I managed to convince 8 people to get Macs who either had not done so in the past, or who were coming back to the Mac from a long hiatus. Although I had for many years not considered myself an evangelist for "the cause", recent changes in Windows …

After all the complaining about the power used by the nation's computers, the San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that a study(admittedly commissioned by a computer chip manufacturer, AMD) indicates that the use is close to 1.2%. Not small, but nowhere near the 13% touted by some sources. It …

For those curious about high-speed wireless connectivity, you can check out Apple's 802.11 FAQ where they inform us that all Core2 Duo machines (except the 17" 1.83GHz iMac) are capable of N.

Yesterday, the Paulsen household had one of those annoying, all-day, computer problems. On Wednesday, I'd upgraded the RAM in Carol's PowerBook from 768MB to 1.25GB in order to increase performance. The change was supposed to have no negative effects... unfortunately, a disk drive fault left Carol without a functional …

Many of you know that I was at Apple's World Wide Developer's Conference last week in San Francisco. According to the rules, I can't say much in detail about what happened at the conference, but it was a good time. For those who missed the Stevenote address (you can view …

Flip4Mac, the plug-in that allows QuickTime to play Windows Media files (.wma, and .mwv) is now available for download as a Universal Binary, so those of us with Intel Macs can also enjoy it. I haven't finished testing it yet, but chances are that it's every bit as nice as …

The online Apple Store is indicating 24 hour shipment for the 2.16GHz Core Duo 17" MacBook Pro. Feature-wise, it adds Firewire 800 and a DL DVD burner. Other than that, the specs are basically as you would expect: 17" display instead of 15" and a bunch of the optional …

It was only a matter of time, and the time has now come. Expect to see benchmarks within the hour or so of running games under XP using this technology, but for the time being, Apple has announced Boot Camp, technology that will be in 10.5 (Leopard) that allows …

It was announced yesterday on OnMac.net that Blanka and Narf (obviously not their real names) have won the prize of $13,854 for figuring out how to dual-boot a MacBook Pro (or Intel Mini, or Intel iMac) into Windows or OS X. The solution (downloadable here) is a bit …

Conroe, the CPU theorized to be at the heart of Apple's upcoming desktop line, is now being shown by Intel. The folks at ExtremeTech got a chance to take a look and were quite impressed according to their preview.

Patch 1.9.3 is available for World of Warcraft and it supports the Intel Macintoshes! It might not be earth shattering news for most, but the performance on this is astounding.