We’re Moving!
So come check out the new website - Apple Knacks!
The time has come to jump to my own website for a variety of reasons - mostly because I have no friggin’ clue how to fix Wordpress on here, haha. But also to grow the site - I now have an updated Wordpress blog hosted on my own server (which includes file hosting, very fast @ 1.5 MB/s - no more Mediafire!) and will be expanding the blog items into Hackintosh, general Mac, and even Windows stuff!
My schedule has also changed, which is a big reason I am starting up a new blog for new projects - I am no longer doing 70+ hour weeks plus night school, so I have a bit more free time to post some cool stuff, which I’m really excited about. Yes, I will be bringing the wiki back - complete with updates! I’m still onTwitter as well (best way to contact me).
PCwiz has been a super gracious host for the past couple of years, so be sure to check out his new site as well (he’s also a ninja programmer in the iOS & OSX environments, so if you need a top-notch coder, check him out!). And on that note - so long, and thanks for all the fish! Here’s to a new beginning! 
Pro Tip: Create a Naked Image
No, not those kinds of naked images! I’m talking about a raw system image of Snow Leopard. If you’ve been on the scene long enough, you probably already know the value of making a system clone to an image file using SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner. If you work on Macs or Hacks a lot, then you’ll find creating what I call a “naked” image pretty useful. The idea is simple:
- Install Snow Leopard onto a hard drive
- Run all system updates (up to 10.6.6 at the time of writing)
- Clone this drive to a compressed DMG file
The idea is to have a 100% stock image of Snow Leopard, complete with system updates. Since there are no Hackintosh drivers on this image, you can use it on real Macs or Hackintoshes just the same. But why? For time saving, of course! A typical Snow Leopard installation on a fresh drive takes a good 30 minutes, plus another hour of running system updates to get it patched to the latest Apple point release. Between rebooting and getting everything setup, you’re typically looking at 2 solid hours of setup work. Ugh! Who has that kind of time?
Drumroll…with a compressed DMG image that already contains a pre-setup system image (complete with updates!), this “fresh install” procedure usually takes under 5 minutes. Yup - in less than 5 minutes, your blank drive has Snow Leopard along with the latest combo update and is ready to boot up! (or install Hackintosh drivers to and THEN boot up!)
Buy Apple Stock
I’m just sayin’…
Screenshot via Mousewheel Click
I take a lot of screenshots. It’s handy when writing guides, saving a section of a webpage, or capturing an application menu to send via email, for example. The keyboard shortcut I use for capturing screenshots quickly is Command+Shift+4…not the easiest hand position (you can read more about OS X’s built-in screenshot utility over here). In order to make taking screenshots easier & quicker, I decided I wanted to simply hit the useless scrollwheel button on the mouse to activate it
I recently starting using a great (but rather expensive) keyboard shortcut utility called QuicKeys ($59.95). There’s a lot of other apps to control input devices and handle keyboard shortcuts such as Quicksilver, Butler, ControllerMate, Keyboard Maestro, etc., but most are either very complicated or a little buggy. So far QuicKeys has been extremely straightforward and reliable - that’s all I ask in a keyboard shortcut app! Haha.
The actual setup is pretty simple: open QuicKeys and record your keystroke, then setup the mousewheel to activate the keystroke. This sounds easy, but it’s a little complicated for the actual setup, so I’ve included some screenshots to walk you through the process. When you’re creating your shortcut, select “device” under the Scopes & Triggers menu, then “Button 3″:
If your mouse button 3 doesn’t work right off the bat, you may need to configure it manually. I didn’t install any drivers for the Microsoft mouse I was using at the time, so I went in and manually configured it in the Advanced Device Trigger Options menu:
And voila - I click on the scrollwheel button, and the screenshot utility activates! This is soooo handy because I don’t even have to think about taking a screenshot, I just move my finger over an inch and tap the scrollwheel button, grab the section of the screen I want, and I’m done! This is a great holdover until Snagit for Mac comes out
Lock your Screen
In the Windows world, you can easily lock your screen with a quick press of the Windows key & “L” (or by doing CTRL-ALT-DEL and hitting the “Lock Computer” button). This is ideal for corporate environments where security is important, as well as for home users to prevent their siblings, spouses, roommates, or kids from wrecking havoc on their system. If you’ve been looking for a good way to quickly and easily lock your Mac’s screen, then this post is for you!
What you see in the image above is a lock icon on the menubar. Clicking it drops down a menu, where you can select “Lock Screen”. The screen then turns black, and moving the mouse or using the keyboard brings up a password prompt for your computer. Previously I had used a Hot Corner that activated a password-protected screensaver, but I found that inconvenient because I would sometimes accidentally hit that corner and activate it. This way is slightly more deliberate, which prevents accidental locking, but is also easy enough that there’s no barrier to doing it.
Activating this feature is simple: simply do a Spotlight search for “Keychain Access”, which is an application that is part of OS X’s security suite. Open up the Preferences pane and check “Show Status in Menu Bar”, then close out of the app.
That’s it! Now you can instantly lock you screen, without accidentally activating it like the Hot Corner method.
Update: If you want to setup a shortcut key to activate it (such as Windows+L or CTRL+ALT+DEL), there’s a real nice keyboard shortcut application called QuicKeys that will let you shortcut just about anything, include menulets. The app is $59, although there is an unlimited trial available. Easiest way to set it up is just to record yourself locking the screen and then go in and tie the keys you want to the action.
Also, make sure you hide the Dock icon in Preferences (so that it only lives in the menubar) and set it to start at login. This is a really handy program. Another handy trick is to tie the “Print Screen” button to OS X’s built-in screenshot utility - so instead of pressing CMD+Shift+4, you can just tap Print Screen to activate the screenshot tool. Nifty!
Success! Data-only iPhone 4
Unlimited Minutes for $6 a Month
So I’ve been investigating various VOIP solutions for my spiffy data-only iPhone lately. I keep going back to Skype: it has mobile and desktop apps, lots of features and options, and really good rates. Plus, most importantly, iPhone compatibility.
The first question is, how do I call landlines with Skype? Skype to Skype calling is free, which is great if the person you’re calling uses Skype (nerd!), but not so great if you want to call an actual phone number. However, Skype offers really nice subscription services for calling landlines and mobile phones. I opted for the $2.99 a month Unlimited US/Canada plan. When I went to checkout, they offered a 15% package discount if you bought a year ahead for $30.84, so I went with that instead ($2.57 a month, woot!).
So now I can call landlines, but how do people call me? And what exactly shows up when I call people’s real phones? Random numbers, that’s what! Luckily Skype offers the ability to purchase an online number, so you can call and be called by actual phones. Since I had purchased a year’s subscription for calling, the online number was only $30 for the year (apparently a 50% discount). So we’re up to about $60 a year for unlimited calling with an actual phone number (although it seems kind of silly to me to split those services up, but whatever).
Now, just to throw a wrench in things, Google Voice recently went public. While it has a lot of features, the core idea is that Google gives you a single phone number to act as a “shortcut” phone number to your home, work, and cell phone numbers, so when you move and depending on your current location, someone can always get ahold of you and you only have to worry about giving out one number. So of course, I wanted to integrate this with Skype!
Now that I had a phone number from Skype, I could setup Google Voice to forward from that number, but when I called back, my Skype number still showed up. I want people to see my Google Voice number! Fortunately again, Skype offers Caller ID, which lets you customize what people see as your number when you call them. For some reason, I couldn’t activate my Caller ID with my subscription fee, so I had to buy some Skype Credit in order to get it working (Note that it takes about 24 hours to setup a new Skype phone number and Caller ID.). The minimum I could get away with was $10 (couldn’t get less than a $10 credit), so I ended up with about $70 total for the year. So to break it down:
- $30.84 for a year’s worth of Unlimited US/Canada calling
- $30 for a year’s access to a real phone number
- $10 for the least Skype Credit I could buy (in order to setup Google Voice as my outgoing phone number on the Caller ID)
- Grand total: $70.84 per year (or about $5.91 a month)
So for just under $6 a month, I have unlimited calling, PLUS I can use my Google Voice number and get all those nifty features that go along with it (voicemail transcriptions to email, SMS to email, ring all my phones, etc. etc.). And I can call from any computer or smartphone capable of running Skype, which includes the iFamily (iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad) plus Android cell phones and Windows and Mac computers.
Not bad!
Project iLiberation
Would you like a data-only iPhone starting at $15 a month? Yes? Watch and learn 
FlashDrop: Effortless Flash memory backup
Wouldn’t it be great if you could easily archive your camera’s entire memory card with one simple click? Then check out my latest app, FlashDrop! It’s a handy app that converts any memory card (SD/CF/XD/etc.), disk (USB, HDD, SSD), or folder to an ISO image file. What does this mean to you?
- Insert your memory card
- Drag the card’s icon onto the FlashDrop icon
- Enjoy a full clone of your card in ISO format!
FlashDrop is an effortless way to ensure that you have a complete copy of any Flash memory card, USB stick, or folder. This includes all of the media files on your memory card, plus the relevant folder structure and support files, which is extremely useful for anything that you want to keep a 1:1 copy of, such as memory cards containing AVCHD video files, client photography, and family movies and photos.
The ISO format is a nice method for archiving because it creates a single, uneditable file that you can mount just like a DMG, but is compatible with Windows and Linux systems (I recommend Pismo File Mount for reading ISO files on Windows). FlashDrop basically creates a virtual memory card with write-protect permanently enabled! This is convenient for throwing onto your backup drive for archiving, as well as burning to CD or DVD for permanent backup.
FlashDrop
FlashDrop saves the file to your desktop as “Archive.iso”, which you can then rename to whatever you want, such as today’s date or a more descriptive filename. Note that you cannot drop individual files, only things with a folder structure such as a folder, hard drive, USB drive, or memory card. Also note that FlashDrop will not overwrite an existing Archive.iso, so you will need to rename or move your previous backup before making a new one.
Icons by Sascha Hoehne. Packaged by Platypus. Code:
hdiutil makehybrid -o ~/Desktop/Archive.iso “$1″ -iso -joliet
Accidental Updates Be Gone!
Have you ever accidentally updated your Hackintosh and then ruined your install? Well fear no more…introducing NoUpdate!
This is a simple app that changes the default update server to one that doesn’t exist, so you never have to worry about accidentally downloading an update that breaks your Hackintosh! Also included is Revert for reverting the Software Update server back to normal, which is handy if you just want to run updates for things like iLife, Pro Apps, etc. NoUpdate is highly recommended for hacks that you don’t ever wanted updated such as your girlfriend’s hack, your mom’s hack, your media center hack, and so on.
Icons by troyboydesign; packaged with Platypus. Leopard & Snow Leopard compatible. Terminal code for serious hackers:
To disable Software Update:
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL “http://noserver.local”
To re-enable Software Update:
defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL