I’m here to tell you that taking it to a store is wholly unnecessary.  I knew beforehand that this upgrade should be easy so I told my Dad that I could probably do it. It’s one of the craziest, easiest processes I’ve run into with computers.

I’ll walk you through the basic steps.

1. First you want to take a Disk Image with Disk Utility and save it to an external HDD. (Click New Image and Select your home drive.)
2. Turn off the computer and take out the battery.
3. Remove the L-bracket from inside the battery case.
4. Flip the gray switches and out pops the RAM.
5. Insert New RAM (Push hard, the most common problem from this upgrade is not seating the RAM properly.)
6. Pull out the HDD by tugging on the white strap.
7. Take off the Magnetic Shielding(what the white tab is affixed to), reattach it to the new drive.
8. Slide the new HDD in.
9. Reattach the L-bracket and reinsert the battery.
10. Boot from an OS X DVD (insert the disk and hold C on start up.)
11. Select the proper language at the initial prompt, but at the install screen select Utilities – Disk Utility from the Menu Bar.
12. Attach your external drive.
13. Format the new drive by selecting Erase in Disk Utility, here you will choose the Volume Format, the default is Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) which is what I went with.
14. Move to the Restore tab, click Image and browse to the Disk Image you took in step 1 and saved to the external drive.
15. Drag your new drive from the list on the left to the Destination field and click Restore.
16. Wait! and Reboot. The copying of my Mum’s disk image took about 2 1/2 hours over USB 2.0 for a 72 gb image.

Amazing huh? 16 steps to a more capable computer.

The process might scare some people but I’m mostly writing this because I feel that this really is easy enough that someone in your family should be able to do it. There is really no need to pay someone for the service. My Dad saved about $300 by going to Newegg (and Me!) rather than taking it to a service center.

And really, if Jony Ive spent so much time designing these machines so it would be this easy, don’t we owe it to him to at least try?

*Disclaimer – If you are very encouraged by this post and decide to try the upgrade, neither I nor Macgasm.net claims any responsibility for it going wrong in any way. This guide should be taken as a informative article only, not a set of instructions.

Apple Upgrade Guides – RAM – http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1651

PDF LINK  - HDD

Macgasm - Apple Tips, Apple News, Apple Everything.

Again, just a great program for nostalgia or looking into that old relic you have kicking around.

iTunes Link - Mactracker

Macgasm - Apple Tips, Apple News, Apple Everything.

Delete. No freed up disk space. Delete another event. No freed up disk space. Small tick in the back o’ my noggin.

iPhoto has a separate Trash. Which needs to be emptied by hand. Go check your iPhoto right now, I bet most of you have been happily deleting photos without even realizing that they’re not actually gone.

I checked preferences and didn’t see any way for it to empty on quitting so it looks like we’re stuck remembering.

Macgasm - Apple Tips, Apple News, Apple Everything.

Over the last year or so, I’ve started my very own classic Mac Collection. I’ve amassed a Classic(with carrying case), 2 Mac SE’s, a Powerbook 520(the very first laptop with a trackpad!) and the jewel of my collection a Newton H1000. Along with a G3 tower(with the flip down side), a G4 tower(flip down side) and an iMac G4(half-basketball, crane-neck).

For any one of these wonderful beasts I can find all the original specs, maximum OS, and original price. I can even play their start-up AND death sounds.

If you’re a Mac enthusiast, looking to upgrade, want a walk through the past or to find out about some of Apple’s more obscure products; check out MacTracker.

I just found out Apple made a digital camera.  In 1992.

MacTracker is freeware but a donation is appreciated.  Thanks to Ian Page for this great program and all his contributers.

Macgasm - Apple Tips, Apple News, Apple Everything.

Just about everyone has played this classic game at some point or another and if you haven’t you should definitely check it out. I think this is my favourite port Wolfenstein; it definitely plays a lot smoother than the Xbox port included at the end of ‘Return to Castle Wolfenstein, which by the by, is another title you should look into playing.

The control format is a good implementation if the pseudo-joystick we’ve seen on other games and they have optional tilt controls as well. They’ve also added a feature that makes the game a lot easier. A Map!

The odd part about this release is that it’s been released both on the App Store and Cydia. Not the Cydia Store though, just the free Cydia. This means that on the App Store the game costs $4.99, but if you have a jailbroken iPhone you can get it for free. Gloriously free.

Both versions include all six original episodes and all 60 levels.

Well, now that I’ve knocked this out early in the day, I’m going to imflame my wrists by playing for the next 6 hours.

Macgasm - Apple Tips, Apple News, Apple Everything.

So, you need  info for multiple items in the Finder, whether it be folders, pictures, music or whatever. Typically, I would select all the items I want info for, Right(Control) – click and then click ‘Get Info’.  And then your screen is a mess of Info panes. This is where Inspector steps in.

If you select just one item, Right(Control) -  click and then hit Option, it acts as a modifier for a number of the tools presented. The one we want to notice is it changes ‘Get Info’ to Show Inspector.’ Clicking this brings up an Info pane as usual but where it differs is when you select a new item or folder. BAM! The info pane changes too! This allows you to scroll through a list of files using the arrow keys, getting separate info for each item without cluttering your screen completely.

This is just so fandangled that I’m going to show you in screen shots.

First, a typical Right(Control) – Click brings up a menu looking like this:

Second, a Right(Control) – Click – Option brings up the new menu looking like this: 

This modifier also allows for several other useful features. One is that if you use Inspector on multiple items it will give you the total size of your selected items. Another is that it will Quick Look at things in a slideshow rather than individually. The last thing I love about this Right(Control) – Click – Option is that it changes ‘Open With’ to ‘Always Open With’.

For clarification  Right(Control) – Click means that you can Right Click or Control Click. For example, if you don’t have two finger right click enabled on your Macbook, you need to hit Control to emulate the second mouse button. This does not mean to hold Control and Right-Click.

Have fun and let us know if you have any other tips and tricks.

Macgasm - Apple Tips, Apple News, Apple Everything.

I’d like to see improvement to the Autofill feature in the options available. One that immediately comes to mind is filling by artist or album. I’m one that loves to listen to whole albums and the Autofill feature only allows grabbing of individual songs.

It seems to me that this functionality is in the Autofill feature, almost definitely, considering how many hidden features and preferences OS X and Apples programs have. Any ideas from the audience for hacking this in?

Macgasm - Apple Tips, Apple News, Apple Everything.

The exploit was run by the same Charlie Miller who won last year with another Mac vulnerability. Mr. Miller ran the exploit through a URL, making this a link baiting style of threat. Mostly it’s an interesting bit of tech gossip that you can toss around with your like minded friends but it makes me think more about Mac users and security.

A large chunk of Apple’s recent growth has been from less savvy people moving to OS X for it’s ease of use and security.  These are the types of people most likely to fall into the trap of link baiting. On top of that, through a lack of understanding these types of people are likely to blame the computer before their own actions. This quickly shifts a new users opinion from ‘Apple is heaps better than Microsoft’ to ‘Apple is no diffent from Microsoft but cost me $800 more.’

I’m not saying this will happen or it even being likely, but I know that anyone I have converted to Macs in the last 2 year would be some annoyed if they got a virus. And they would have no clue how to fix it.

[ Computerworld ]

Update: ZDNet has an interesting interview with Charlie Miller in their blog section. It was posted late yesterday and Ryan Naraine poses some interesting question and gets some unexpected answers. Basically, it comes down to that since Apple has not needed to focus heavily on patching exploits and securing the OS and Safari in particular from the top down there are exploits waiting to be found across the board. It’s a good read; check it out here.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/

Macgasm - Apple Tips, Apple News, Apple Everything.

The website has many of the same features as the App Store on your iPhone; categories, top paid/free etc. The basic difference however is size and ease of use. The App Store is plagued by the fact that browsing through the offerings is…lacking? painful? a total shambles? Appshopper puts the search functions, lists and updates in a clear single page format. Big friendly buttons and search feilds make it a far, far better way to find Apps…if you’re near a computer.

www.appshopper.com

Macgasm - Apple Tips, Apple News, Apple Everything.

The Mac Pros now feature the latest Nehalem processors, which clock up to 2.93ghz running in an eight core setup. Airport Extreme and Time Capsule also saw some features added.

All in all a good day for the Mac community, I know I’m going to be looking at a new Mac Mini sometime this year.

Head over to your local Apple store or apple.com for all the details.

Macgasm - Apple Tips, Apple News, Apple Everything.

I have downloaded the beta and will be using it today, and over the next few days as my main browser, and will update this review as I go.

Before I begin I have to admit that I typically dislike Safari, I find it to be the weakest part of the iLife suite. I don’t know why, as there is no one thing I can put my finger on, other that it’s cold, barren look. I have always leaned towards using Firefox over Safari and in December made the switch to Opera. This does give me experience with all three major Mac browsers but I will admit a previous prejudice against Safari.  With this in mind, I’ll try to leave my previous experiences aside and be impartial.

Apple has added a number of key features in Safari 4.  They have introduced a tool similar to Opera’s Speed Dial, where your most visited or user selected pages are displayed as thumbnails for easy and quick navigation. Cover Flow is now intergrated as a tool to browse bookmarks or history.  There is a new feature for the indexing and searching of  browser history. Apple has also released the new Nitro Engine for Safari, which they claim makes Safari the fastest browser yet. Safari 4 now comes in a Windows native format and also ships with Developer Tools.

One change that they’ve made and may be the hardest to adjust to is that they have moved the tab bar above the address bar. I find this an interesting move because it sets Safari apart from the other web browser’s GUIs in a strange way. Usually Apple has a very good reason for this, so we will see how it goes.

If there’s anything you’d like me to take a specifically closer look at, feel free to ask away in the comments and I’ll see what I can do.

First Impressions.

After about 2 hours of use I can confirm that on some pages, Safari 4 is noticeably faster than Firefox, Opera or the previous version of Safari.  Very media rich sites, such as Gizmodo’s main page, loaded faster as did html only pages such as Reddit’s main page. Pages with an even mix such as Macworld or Cnet are about the same.

The Tab bar on top has definite advantages but as expected, it’s really disorienting. It’s only become a problem so far when a link opens in a new window rather than a new tab. The window opens so that it appears to be in the tab that you started from. However, this is a minor issue that is only a habit to break.

The Search Bar’s autofill is much more powerful. It now provides a split up list, similar to Spotlight, that has previous searches and suggestions based on what you have typed so far. Also, the Address Bar performs much more like Firefox’s Superbar than previous version, by searching the text, name, address and tags of a website as you type it in.

So far, so good. I am much happier with this version of Safari than any previous, depending on how today goes, I might make another browser switch.

Update 2: So, I’ve been using the Safari 4 Beta for about a day now doing my regular browsing and trying to get a good feel for it. The improvements are all good, solid worthwhile changes that I don’t think anyone will get too hung up on. Moving the tab bar is a bold move, but, it seems to work and uses screen real estate a little better than before. The implementation of Top Sites is great, and if you haven’t used Opera before I think you will be surprised at how much you come to rely on this feature. The Bookmarks layout change is also a good one, I think the inclusion of Cover Flow is a little extraneous, but I find it a little gimmicky no matter the implementation.

I’ve have run into a few bugs so far, the biggest of which is the inability to hyperlink in WordPress’ online client, which is why there are no useful links in this post. The other has been one of my frustrations with Safari for a while. I never want links to open in a new window, ever. I prefer having scads of tabs over even two windows, however, I can’t find how to alter a links set behaviour to ‘Open in New Tab’, rather than ‘Open in New Window’. There’s always the option of command-clicking but there’s no way to change this in the preferences, as there is in Firefox or Opera. I watch all my television online and this may actually be a deal breaker for me, but I doubt most people would even notice.

Overall, a great revision that keeps Apple bumping shoulders with all the best browsers. The new features are logical, useful steps towards an ideal product but don’t quite get it there yet.

So, that’s my review of Safari, but guess what? Omni made their browser OmniWeb free so now there is a new gun in town, I will let you know about that one next week.

Update 3 – I have found one essential feature missing from the Safari 4 Beta. When quitting with multiple tab open or if (shocker) your browser happens to crash, Safari will not resume your previous session, does not provide a dialogue to save these open tabs or anything. I found this out after I had about 20 tabs open to various news sites with a line of tabs of things to be read from reddit. Wouldn’t you know, Safari crashes(not sure why, might have been the number of tabs) and when I relaunched it only takes you to your Top Sites. When doing a quit by menu it does not save either. This is a major Fail for me, but may not be a big issue for someone more organized.

Macgasm - Apple Tips, Apple News, Apple Everything.

But no more thanks to Trans Lucy 2 by Startly Technologies.

‘Trans Lucy is a DVD player that lets users float the video display above other applications and adjust the translucency so they can see and work with documents “œbehind-the-scenes.”

Trans Lucy is a radical new way to watch DVDs on your computer. Unlike other computer DVD players, Trans Lucy lets you float the video display above your other applications. Trans Lucy goes one step further by allowing you to make the video display translucent so you can still see and work with your documents that are “behind-the-scenes.” You will love being able to watch movies and keep working at the same time. But this goes beyond just entertainment. A user can watch educational DVDs while working on course material or use Trans Lucy for a myriad of other similar instructional purposes. The ability to multi-task is greatly increased with this patent pending technology.’

As such, I’m watching Scrubs full screen as I write this. My girlfriend says it makes her sick but to me it’s another way to cram as much media through my eyes as possible.

Startly Technologies bills Trans Lucy 2 as primarily a DVD player but it also handles any file that Quicktime can. Through the use of plug-ins and extra codecs most video formats are supported, such as .avi, .mp4, .m4v and divX.

If you’ve ever run into a situation where you HAVE to get that term paper done but watching Lost somehow takes precedent; this is your perfect solution.

Download Demo or Purchase Trans Lucy 2 here

Startly Technologies Mainpage

Macgasm - Apple Tips, Apple News, Apple Everything.

On Thursday, MacRumors posted an image from their forums that one of their users purported to be the next Mac Mini, the most noticeable revision was the addition of a fifth USB port and the replacement of the DVI connector with a mini-DVI and mini-DisplayPort.

Later that day, a 9t05Mac reader posted an image which was manipulated to show the effects of Photoshop or other editing software. This analysis declared the image fake for a variety of reason.

On Friday afternoon the source of the image posted a video of the device. The video is simply someone’s hand spinning the Mac Mini slowly.

The rumored specifications are to be similar to the Macbook, as is usual with the Mac Mini;

Intel Core 2 Duo

2GHz

3MB L2 Cache

2gb DDR3 RAM

Superdrive with SATA connection

The MacRumors thread is still going strong and I will keep you updated with the outcome. Hopefully we will see this or a similar revision to the line in the next few months; it has been almost two years since the last Mac Mini update and the specs are understandably lagging.

Thanks to AppleInsider and MacRumors.

Macgasm - Apple Tips, Apple News, Apple Everything.

Apple’s reason for rejecting the app was that the content was ‘potentially offensive.’ As with many app store rejections however, this seems to be more protectionist policy in the approval process. The South Park creators are well known for having gotten fed up with fans resorting to potentially illegal means to get access to their shows and decided to post them all online for free. Apple sells all the South Park episodes through their online store. This isn’t a business practice or policy that one can really take offense to, as I’m sure that any of us would act the same if it came to our sources of income, but it’s very frustrating for consumers.

So, without further ado I will provide you some ways to enjoy free South Park on demand, wherever you are.

First off, in regards to the iPhone there is South Park Mobile which features an iPhone customized interface and pretty snappy download speeds.  They also have a sister site that is Family Guy Mobile which even has Blue Harvest.

Second, if you’re at your desk or laptop there is the South Park Studio’s site, and for Canadian readers there is  the Comedy Network website.

Third, there are several indexing sites that collect or post links themselves. One dedicated to South Park is www.allsp.com and  Surf the Channel has a good selection of many T.V Shows and Movies.

• South Park Mobile – www.southparkmobile.net
• South Park Studio’s – www.southparkstudios.com
• Comedy Network – www.thecomedynetwork.ca
• AllSP.com – www.allsp.com
• Surf the Channel – www.surfthechannel.com

[South Park Studios via BoingBoing]

Macgasm - Apple Tips, Apple News, Apple Everything.

It seems like I’m the latest edition to Macgasm’s blogging team and I wanted to share something good with you, just to kick things off.

What I’ve got for you is Apple’s very own repository of OS X tips and tricks that’s hidden away on Apple.com. Either hit up this link or go to apple.com, search ‘Business’, take the top hit and click on ‘Theater.’

The video tutorials introduced an Apple Genuis and give excellent walk-throughs of all the provided tips. The tutorials are good for new and old Mac users, either to help you get know your way around or to remind yourself of some of the great features you’ve forgotten about.

There’s a new tip every week; this week’s is about the Finder Path Bar.

Enjoy!

Macgasm - Apple Tips, Apple News, Apple Everything.