For most of the history of personal computing, large companies shunned Macs because there were few tools available to manage hundreds or thousands of computers. Large companies have scalability needs that small offices do not. Apple has addressed some of these issues with OS X Server and Apple Remote Desktop. These tools are adequate…
Author: Dan
Dan Kessler is the owner of MacMaven Consulting.
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Time Machine disk full options
Anyone who’s been using Time Machine for years knows that your Time Machine drive eventually fills up. Time Machine handles this situation by automatically deleting your oldest backups. If you don’t want this to happen, the best solution is to buy an additional hard drive. Storage is extremely cheap now, with 4 TB external…
A study by a company that makes PC monitoring and administration tools found that the most reliable Windows laptop was the mid-2012 MacBook Pro 13″. This shouldn’t be entirely surprising. Apple computers have always been manufactured with top-grade components. Boot Camp provides the drivers to run Windows relatively seamlessly. While there are minor issues…
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Time Machine metadata
(This post is for our more advanced readers who are curious about how Time Machine stores its data.) OS X stores Time Machine metadata in file extended attributes. These attributes can be viewed using the xattr command. To view this data: 1. Navigate to your Time Machine backup disk using Terminal. 2. cd into…
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Questionable advice
I came across the advice of a Mac consultant who wrote that you should restart your Mac once or twice daily to prevent your Mac from slowing down. This seems like a rather dubious way to fix a problem. Your Mac should not be slowing down as you use it. There are a variety…
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Apple ID two-step verification
Apple recently added two-step verification to Apple IDs. This optional feature helps thwart hackers from using your Apple ID. This mechanism requires you to enter a four digit code after entering your usual password. The code is delivered to your iOS devices or your cell phone. In most cases, a hacker won’t have access to…
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OS X Contacts Printing Options
The Mountain Lion Contacts application has some printing options that you might not be familiar with. After you select Print… in the File menu, click on the Show Details button. There’s a Styles drop-down list, where you can select: Mailing Labels Envelopes Lists Pocket Address Book Before you select Print… find the contact(s) you’d like…
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QuickBooks 2013 for Mac
I recently started using QuickBooks 2013 for Mac to handle MacMaven Consulting’s accounting needs. I had previously been using a Windows accounting package. While the Windows package handled the job adequately, the lack of Mac integration slowed me down. Tasks like emailing invoices and entering customer information required extra steps. So last month I pulled…
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802.11ac
Apparently we can expect 802.11ac wi-fi products coming from Apple soon. Hints of the protocol were found in the latest beta of Mountain Lion. While not unexpected, it would be great news to see 802.11ac this year. For low-end hardware, the protocol starts at 433 Mb/sec. Since this is Apple, we’ll probably be getting higher-end…
For those of you in professions with billable hours (like myself), a time tracking application is very useful. There are countless applications for time tracking on the Mac and iOS. While many are feature-laden products, I use a simple open source application called timeEdition. It’s available on OS X, Windows, and Linux. Once you add…