Barkings! | The Small Dog Apple Blog

It’s pretty safe to say that almost all Mac users use iTunes if they have a music collection of any size. Of course, if you have an iPod or iPhone, then you must use iTunes to synchronize it. Many design paradigms stem from iTunes, including the current Finder and iPhoto.

I have a gripe, though. If I’m in the middle of a playlist and connect my iPod touch, the view switches automatically from the playlist to the synchronization and setup screen for the iPod. I’m told that this feature is a long-standing one, but it took me all this time to find it.

You can edit the name of a playlist by double clicking on its title. This I knew, but I accidentally double-clicked on the blue symbol to the left of the playlist name, and a separate window with that playlist opened.

When an iPod is connected, the main iTunes window will come to the front with the iPod’s settings and options. The separate playlist window, though, will remain in the background, saving you from having to find your spot in the playlist.

Many of our clients with large houses or outbuildings want to get maximum wireless coverage without running or burying ethernet. Apple’s AirPort Extreme, AirPort Express and Time Capsule devices make excellent wireless signal repeaters to cover large distances. If you have an existing AirPort device, you can add another to extend your network.

First, run Software Update on your Mac, and make sure you have all the available updates. Many updates improve wireless performance and security, so you want to have all of those installed. Then open Applications > Utilities > Airport Utility, and double-click on your current AirPort Extreme, AirPort Express, or Time Capsule, click on the Wireless tab, and check “Allow this network to be extended.”

If you do not already have a password on your network and want your network protected, set the password now before you add any other wireless devices. You should use WPA2 Personal for maximum protection. Once you have saved those settings, the AirPort device has restarted, and you have rejoined the network, you can move on to setting up the next device.

To set up another AirPort device, make sure it is new or unconfigured. If you have an existing device and wish to reset it, you can do a hard reset by holding down the reset button for about five seconds while the device is plugged in. If you have a new AirPort, you will also want to install the updated software that comes with it since AirPort Utility 5.5 is not yet available via Software Update.

Next, open AirPort Utility, and select your new or newly-reset device. Click “continue” and it will walk you through the setup process. When it asks how you want to connect it to the internet, choose “Join an exiting wireless network.” Choose your network from the list, and if necessary, type in the password. Then you should be able to check a checkbox to allow clients to join the extended network. Complete the setup wizard, and let the device restart. If you did it correctly, the AirPort light should be green on the device.

I recommend a central location for your first wireless router, avoiding refrigerators, big chimneys, and any other architectural details that could cause gaps in the network. Try to avoid wireless phones, especially if they operate on the 2.4 or 5.8 gigahertz bands. New DECT 6.0 phones operate on a different frequency than wireless networks, and will not interfere. Before you deploy another AirPort device to extend your network, you should use a laptop to make sure you have good wireless signal in that location; otherwise the next router won’t be able to connect and extend the network.

You should also keep in mind that every device extending your network will halve available bandwidth since network traffic will double. Repeater devices copy everything the extending device does, and vice versa. Adding a third device will again cut throughput in half, so only extend a network as much as you have to. I also recommend using the newest possible AirPort gear for your entire network for their dual-band capability, which lets them operate simultaneously on the 2.4 gigahertz band for older devices and the 5.8 gigahertz band for newer devices. I only use AirPort Express units when wireless music streaming is desired, since they can only operate on one frequency band at a time.

All this aside, the very best way to extend your wireless network is to connect satellite base stations by ethernet, as there is no loss of bandwidth. But that’s a topic for another time!

This is a service Small Dog’s Consulting branch performs often. If you’re in Vermont, you can email consulting@smalldog.com to make an appointment.

A friend recently sent me an email, questioning why his MacBook Pro with 4GB of RAM was “getting slower and slower, with an increasing frequency of the appearance of the SRWOD (spinny rainbow wheel of death).” This is something I occasionally hear about, but haven’t experienced (except for Safari randomly bogging down for several seconds).

Unfortunately, mysterious computer slowdowns can be difficult to diagnose. Overstuffed system cache, old temp files, corrupted preferences, a hard drive in the early stages of failure, and faulty RAM are always candidates for causing this problem. Here are some suggestions to resolve system slowdowns.

Also, please make sure you have a solid backup of your Macs important data before proceeding. I’ll say it again: make sure your Mac is backed up properly before proceeding.

1. Any Mac will slow down when its hard drive is almost full, regardless of processor speed. Simply moving some of your data (especially media files like movies, video podcasts, etc) to an external drive can greatly improve a Mac’s responsiveness.

Read how to reclaim hard drive space in an old Kibbles article by clicking here.

2. Clear your Mac’s desktop. The OS has to draw each of those icons as separate windows, so when you have dozens of files littered on the desktop the system is taxed. Clearing the Macs desktop is proven to improve system performance.

3. Make sure your computer is up to date with all the latest software and firmware updates from Apple. This can go a long way to improving system performance. To check this, click the Apple in the top left corner of the screen and select “Software Update…”

4. Simply running a free maintenance program can often help bring a sluggish and flakey machine back to speed. These programs force the Mac’s regular Unix maintenance scripts; normally these run daily, weekly, and monthly early in the morning. Click here for further reading on this.

I use a program called Onyx to run these scripts. You can get it for Tiger (10.4) and Leopard (10.5). It’s effective and easy to use. It starts by checking the S.M.A.R.T. status of your hard drive, so you can determine if the drive is failing. This step takes several minutes. After that Onyx can flush system cache, etc.

One catch about Onyx is that it has several options that most people shouldn’t use, such as the option for erasing bookmarks and internet browsing history. I do like and recommend Onyx, though—get it for free from the developer by clicking here. You can also download Onyx directly from Apple’s site by clicking here.

You can also download a simpler program called MacJanitor that will only run the maintenance scripts by clicking here. When a tech diagnoses your Mac, he or she runs a battery of programs that are similar to Onyx. This takes several hours. However, Onyx does a great job for occasional repairs and maintenance.

5. Check the health of your hard drive. I depend on Onyx to verify the S.M.A.R.T. status of my Mac’s hard drive. Immediately back up your computer if you think there’s a real issue with the drive. Then consider using a dedicated drive diagnostic/repair tool such as Disk Warrior. If the drive is having issues and you’re going to replace it, consider using a 7200RPM model. A faster hard drive will result in a (slightly) faster Mac.

6. Check the health of your Mac’s RAM. There are several ways to test the health of your Mac’s RAM. I use Rember, which is a free program that is a front-end GUI to a basic Unix ‘memtest’ command. You can read more about testing RAM by clicking here

7. Deal with mutant applications. Ok, so maybe the word “mutant” is unfair. However, it’s always a good idea to delete applications that you don’t use. I use AppCleaner to do this.

Also, many apps install helper programs that run by default whenever you startup your Mac. This typically happens in the background, without the user having to confirm anything. Often these aren’t needed and can hog system resources without having anything to show for it. To disable startup items you don’t use, navigate to System Preferences > Accounts > Login items and uncheck the list.

Finally, any active, running application uses system resources including CPU cycles, RAM and disk activity, even when it is in the background and you’re not using it. Some programs leak memory when they are running, which makes them gobble RAM over time.

8. Use Activity Monitor and iStat Pro to analyze which system processes and applications are hogging system resources. You can download the iStat Pro widget by clicking here. Activity Monitor is found in the Utilities Folder which is nested in the Applications folder in OS X.

9. If you have an Intel Mac, use Xslimmer to trim away the legacy PowerPC code from Universal binary applications. Read more by clicking here.

10. Programs that automatically perform syncing, indexing, and backup operations on your Mac can occasionally slow it down. They can sometimes cause minor drags that slow the system for a couple of seconds at a time.

If none of these helps, the problem will likely be more time-consuming to resolve. At Small Dog, our techs run a battery of tests with several software and hardware tools to seek out and fix strange system slowdowns. Hopefully the above suggestions will keep you from having to send in your machine!

Editor’s note: Check out this cheeky website to log your time spent waiting for the “Spinning Beach Ball of Death!”

One of my favorite features in Mac OS X is that certain icons themselves are a “preview” of the file’s contents. A photo’s icon is a tiny version of the photo itself, making browsing through a packed-full folder in the Finder less of a chore than it might be otherwise. A customer came in yesterday wondering why some of his icons showed this preview and others didn’t. I didn’t know the answer at first and began poking around preferences and ‘asking’ Google. This was a great question that had me stumped for a few minutes.

I revisited the “Show View Options” window from the Finder’s View menu and saw what I missed the first time through: a checkbox for “Show icon preview.” With this checked, all icons—not just a random few—were turned into previews. Snow Leopard adds functionality to the icon preview for PDF files. If you resize the icons to something greater than 64 × 64 pixels using the slider at the bottom-right of a Finder window, you can place the pointer over the icon and arrows will appear, allowing you to preview the document page-by-page.

It’s very common for technicians to run into hard drives or files that are on the brink of failure or contain corrupted files that hang up traditional backup and transfer methods. Disk Utility can be used to create an image of a folder or drive, but tends to throw an input/output error at the slightest hesitation, like those caused by failing drives or corrupted files.

SuperDuper is much better at making disk images from failing drives or corrupted source material; while not the best tool for the job, it does seem to be the most versatile. I urge you to buy your own copy and support the developer of this fantastic tool: http://www.shirt-pocket.com.

Ditto is a command-line tool that will copy block by block the information from one directory (the source) to another (the destination). It’s very simple and does not care about hesitation from mechanical or logical failures. This said, it will not extract data from a hard drive that’s too far gone. I like to use Ditto in verbose mode, just so I can see that it’s working and how far along it is.

Many people avoid Terminal for fear of typing all those long commands and file paths. Not an unjustified fear because you can simply drag the source and destination right into the terminal window, and the paths will be automatically entered for you. Here’s how to use ditto my favorite way.

Assuming you have a terminal window open, simply type the following (but leave off the brackets):

ditto -v [source] [destination]

If you’re copying a folder on your Desktop to your Documents folder, it’d look like this:

ditto -v /Users/matt/Desktop/stuff/ Users/matt/Documents

The guide to using Ditto, and every other command line application, can be found by typing man x in terminal, where ‘x’ is the name of the application. So, for Ditto’s user guide, simply type man ditto and then press return.