Category: Apple

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AppleJack for Mac

Macs generally don’t have startup problems, but it’s good to be prepared in case your Mac OS X computer won’t start.

The normal steps for trying to get a Mac to boot involve pressing keyboard shortcuts during the boot process. From Apple’s keyboard shortcuts page:

Startup keyboard shortcuts

Press the key or key combination until the expected function occurs/appears (for example, hold Option during startup until Startup Manager appears, or Shift until “Safe Boot” appears). Tip: If a startup function doesn’t work and you use a third-party keyboard, connect an Apple keyboard and try again.

Key or key combination What it does
Option Display all bootable volumes (Startup Manager)
Shift Perform Safe Boot (start up in Safe Mode)
C Start from a bootable disc (DVD, CD)
T Start in FireWire target disk mode
N Start from NetBoot server
X Force Mac OS X startup (if non-Mac OS X startup volumes are present)
Command-V Start in Verbose Mode
Command-S Start in Single User Mode

My first step to fixing a Mac that is stuck on the gray boot screen is to hold the Option key and attempt to chose the hard drive to boot. If that fails, I will try to either boot into Safe Mode or from an external firewire hard drive, allowing me to fix things.

Extra startup help from AppleJack

AppleJack is a free troubleshooting assistant that you need to install prior to your computer having problems. It gives you a DOS-like Menu of options that can fix common problems. You can repair the disk, repair permissions, remove cache files, validate preference files, and remove swap files.

Download AppleJack from the download page. Run the AppleJack installer. It only takes 74K of space for the current version as of this writing, 1.6.

To start AppleJack, first hold Command and S keys at startup. This starts Single User Mode as mentioned above. Then type one these commands.

Command What it does
applejack start the AppleJack menu (see image below)
applejack auto run through all the menu tasks automatically
applejack auto restart run through all the menu tasks automatically, then restart

Only use AppleJack when your computer will not start because changing these basic parts of the operating system can introduce other problems. Still, I install AppleJack on all my Macs for the extra help it can provide.

For more info, see the AppleJack SourceForge page, this CNET article which explains what each command is doing, or this page of user experiences.

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Visualize Your Hard Drive to Free Space

It’s sometimes difficult to find out what’s taking up all your computer hard drive space. That’s why I like these free programs which visually display the contents of your hard drive by file size. These programs make it easy to find and delete large files and directories that you no longer need.

For Windows – Disk Space Fan

Disk Space Fan shows you a beautiful fan of your hard drive space. Here’s a video of how it works. When you install the free version, it allows you to use the Pro version for free for 15 days, then it reverts to the free version automatically. All the basic tools are included in the free version though.

UPDATE: Daniel in the comments alerted me to the fact that Disk Space Fan is a ripoff of the Mac app DaisyDisk available at http://daisydiskapp.com.

For Mac – GrandPerspective

GrandPerspective for Mac OS X is similar to Disk Space Fan but chooses the box metaphor to visually display your files. The first segment of this video explains how it works.

For more ideas on saving hard disk space, look at the Lifehacker article How to Analyze, Clean Out, and Free Space on Your Hard Drive.

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iTunes Scripts for Mac

iTunes has some quirks. One is that if you add artwork using its Get Album Artwork function, the images are not embedded in the music files but are kept elsewhere in the iTunes database. This is normally fine. But if you want to send someone an mp3 you have, the artwork won’t travel with it. So I was looking for software to fix this and came upon the resource of Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes (for Mac only).

Doug has software and scripts to help you with many common issues such as dealing with duplicate files and multiple iTunes libraries.

My problem was solved with the script Embed Artwork. Once you install the files, you get a script option in the iTunes menu as shown here, allowing you to embed the artwork into the MP3 file so that it is portable. This also helps people who want to use iTunes and other non-Apple media players such as Android devices.

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iPhone 4 at Clarendon Virginia Apple Store

The line this morning was over 4 hours long at the Apple store in Clarendon, Virginia. Apple gave us water and a guy from Whole Foods came around with carts of food. The Whole Foods guy would hand out food, then a napkin saying, “There’s a nap for that.”