Macenstein

Tips/How To: Use the Mac to ground your kids

Ahhh report card season. There can be no prouder moment in a parent’s life than when they open that report card and see that their little babies are excelling in their studies thanks to countless hours of hard work, studying, determination, and of course, amazing genetics. And of course there can be no greater sense of shame, disappointment, and out-right “how can I have been so blind?”-rage when you find out your little angel has spent most of their time not... Read More

How to: Swap your recently purchased 8 GB iPhone for a new 16 GB one

Faithful Macenstein reader jonro had been writing me for months leading up to Macworld, asking my thoughts on when a new iPhone would be released. He really wanted to make the leap, but was worried an impending update would leave him feeling like he wasted his money. I kept telling him it seemed like Macworld was a sure bet (whoops) but if not, then soon after. I wasn’t expecting a 3G iPhone, but I thought for sure 16 GB model was likely. Well, no less than 18 days... Read More

Help the readers: GMail “To-Do” troubles

Faithful Macenstein reader airfang writes: Sup, doc! So I have Gmail IMAP set up with Mail, but now whenever I tried to create a To-Do item in Mail, it automatically goes under the category “Gmail” and will be sent to my Gmail server as well. Furthermore it creates a “calendar” under the category “Gmail” in iCal as well, and remains the only choice of calendar for the To-Do item. I simply want the To-Do item created in Mail to be local. But... Read More

OS X 10.5.2: Trouble in “virtual paradise”?

Faithful Macenstein reader dolfke writes us with a warning to Second Life users hoping to test out the latest 10.5.2 Leopard build. According to dolfke, 10.5.2 breaks SL functionality in a big way. “sl launches, then the general connection screen, where one can introduce name and password, then connect … sl loads, but when connecting to inworld, the last stage before coming onworld, all stalls, beachball, then CRASH …all 4 versions, Beta grid, normal program,... Read More

OK, This is getting REALLY annoying

Anyone out there figure out way to mark all messages as “read” in the iPhone’s e-mail app yet? Or to delete more than one message at a time? Looking very much forward to 1.1.3… 🙁  Read More

Backing up both Intel and PPC computers to the same Time Machine drive

Faithful Macenstein reader Scott writes: Hey, I just got a 750GB external hard drive with the intention to back up both my iMac and my older iBook G4. I installed Leopard on both to use Time Machine. I plugged in the hard drive to my iMac and have it backing that up. When I went to plug it into my iBook, it said it would erase the hard drive and then start backing up the iBook, which would then, obviously erase everything that I have backed up from my iMac. Have you or any... Read More

Help an iPhone-hacking Canuck

Faithful Macenstein reader Sean writes: So I am a proud iPhone owner in Canada..yes hacked into the phone through a third party application. But I need some help now. I had been going through customizing my iPhone for a few months now. I have summerboard and customize from the installer application. Alas today I experienced my first major issue. I recently updated the customize app, and low and behold…when I went to go back into rSBT (which I had done previously several... Read More

Time Machine doesn’t like apostrophes

Faithful Macenstein reader Jon Rosen writes us with a bizarre Time Machine issue he was experiencing. “I’ve been having a bizarre problem with Time Machine. It makes 2 backups in a row every time it does a backup. The second backup is a much smaller one. It took me about 90 minutes to get to the proper person at Apple Tech Support. Apparently, it’s a known issue. It has to do with there being an apostrophe in my computer’s name under Sharing. Apparently,... Read More

Using Disk Warrior to repair flaky Leopard Installations

Faithful Macenstein reader Jon writes of with his recent experience in running Disk Warrior to help fix his upity Leopard install. Good morning! I upgraded to Leopard yesterday on two systems and have some information that might be useful to someone else. After upgrading my iMac, it acted “flaky.” Some System Preferences would hang as would other things. Before reverting to a backup, I ran DiskWarrior on it. It found a whole slew of inconsistencies introduced by the... Read More

So, what do you know about AVCHD?

Macenstein has now gotten enough of a readership base that I feel the time has come to abuse our popularity and ask for a little technical advice. The question today has to do with whether or not I should buy an AVCHD camcorder, or, more accurately, whether I should return the one I just bought. In preparation for Halloween and multiple children’s birthday parties, this Saturday I went to Circuit City and picked up the Panasonic HDC-SD5 AVCHD camcorder. Without getting too... Read More