1. Prepare your NAS. Make sure it is fully functioning. This mini-guide assumes you already have one that is functioning well, and you know how to manage it.
2. It would be preferable to assign your NAS a Static IP address. Check your router and NAS documentation for guidelines on how to do this.
3. In OS X, open up Terminal and enter the following command to enable Time Machine to work with your NAS: defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
4. Log out of OS X and Log in again. You do not need to reboot your machine.
5. Time Machine saves backups in a very specific format, and we will use a sparsebundle to get this done. The sparsebundle name consists of your Computername_MACaddress.sparsebundle.
6. Find the MAC address of the machine’s internal Ethernet port with ifconfig en0 | grep ether | sed s/://g | sed s/ether// in Terminal. This will return one line of output, which is the MAC address for the Ethernet port, which will be a string of 14 hexadecimal characters (letters and numbers, for example, 001ec4b8f9b3). 

Even if the network backups will be done using a different port (e.g. AirPort: usually en1), the system will use the MAC address of en0 as part of the system identifier.
7. Make a new “sparsebundle” on a local disk (NOT the Time Machine disk!). This sparsebundle is a virtual filesystem image which we’ll copy to the NAS, and Time Machine will then access it remotely (that way Time Machine’s not limited by the filesystem features of whatever NAS it’s using: all the funky stuff happens within the sparsebundle). By default sparsebundles can keep growing until they fill up the NAS, but in this scenario we keep other things on the NAS as well as backups, and we’re going to limit the sparsebundle size to 70 GB.Enter the following command in Terminal:
   sudo hdiutil create -size 70g -type SPARSEBUNDLE -nospotlight -volname "Backup of My Mac" -fs "Case-sensitive Journaled HFS+" -verbose ./Computername_MACaddress. This will create a 70GB sparse-bundle as a case-sensitive, journaled HFS+ without spotlight indexing. Substitute variables in red for values you need. Computername_MACaddress may be in the form of “DansComputer_001ec4b8f9b3
   
8. Log into your NAS and create a user Account (Eg, “TimeMachine”). You may want to assign disk space quotas for this user if you need to.
9. On your NAS, create a shared folder (Eg, “TimeMachine”). Add the user account you created in step 8 above, and grant that user Read+Write privileges.
10. In Finder, select Go>Connect to Server. For the server address, type smb://TimeMachine@ip-address-of-nas/TimeMachine. Click Connect and when prompted, enter the password and save in your keychain.
11. Now copy your locally created sparsebundle into the TimeMachine share. If you did not change the folder when you entered command prompt, you may find this sparsebundle in your Home folder (/Users/yourusername).
12. On your NAS, check to see that the file is copied under the correct user account.
13. Open up Time Machine, select your “TimeMachine”-folder as the desired destination, and the backup will start.
14. Tip: For the first backup it is recommended to connect via LAN, as you will be able to get a throughput of 10-30MB/sec.
15. If your NAS allows for it, you may now hide your TimeMachine folder so they do not show up over the network share list.

Hope this helps.

Installing an application on an external drive is the same as installing it as one would on the Mac’s main hard disk: just drap and drop the .app into the external drive. And you can run it from there once the application has fully copied itself over.

If the application comes with an installer package, just run the installer like you would for a normal OS X application installer, clicking ‘yes’ until you reach the part where you are prompted to select an install location. Select your external drive and proceed with the rest of the installer as usual. Do take note, however, that some applications will not permit you to install them on external media (especially drivers).

Once you have completed the installation/drag-and-drop, just run the application from your external hard disk. There is likely to be a performance penalty, since USB/Firewire is usually slower in data transfer as compared to SATA.

However, do take note that any application that is installed via an installer on your external hard disk has some problems if you are using the external hard disk on another Mac. Firstly, the initial startup of the application will be significantly slower because the application needs to create support files in the Mac computer it is connected to in order to ensure that it can run. These support files are not very large, but they do have a significant impact on the initial start-up time of the application. (This is especially true if you are running an application like NeoOffice on an external drive)

In addition, applications that require a serial number or an activation code (eg: Final Cut Express, Adobe CS, MS Office, etc) to run will not work if the hard disk is connected to another Mac; the application will insist on an activation or serial number before you are allowed to continue using it, as files containing information about its activation are stored on the Mac it was installed on, which are naturally absent in another Mac.

That said, having your work stored on a portable medium is still a very good way to ensure productivity if your current Mac suddenly dies from hardware failure. Just remember to make backups of your external hard disk, otherwise you’d be finished if your external media dies on you.

Last but not least, remember that even if your hard disk is formatted as FAT, the applications you’ve installed will not run if you plan to connect the hard disk to a Windows PC (your documents should still work). And naturally, a HFS formatted hard disk cannot be read by Windows at all.

The list is as follows:

Apple notebooks
- iBook G4: RAM only. (DDR1 SO-DIMM)
- PowerBook G4: RAM only. (DDR1 SO-DIMM)
- Macbook: RAM (DDR2 667MHz SO-DIMM) and Hard disk (SATA)
- Macbook Pro: RAM only (DDR2 667MHz SO-DIMM).
- Macbook Air: None

(Unibody updates!)
- Macbook Unibody (Late 2008): RAM (DDR3 SO-DIMM) and Hard disk. (SATA)
- Macbook Pro Unibody (Late 2008): RAM (DDR3 SO-DIMM) and Hard disk. (SATA)

Apple Desktops
- iMac G4: RAM only. (DDR1 SO-DIMM)
- iMac G5: RAM only. (DDR1 DIMM for non iSight models, DDR2 DIMM for iSight models)
- PowerMac G5 (Dual-Core G5 and Single-Core G5): Ram (DDR1 DIMM for single-core G5s, DDR2 DIMM for dual-core G5s) and Hard disk (SATA II)
- iMac (Intel): RAM only (DDR2 SO-DIMM)
- iMac (Intel Aluminium): RAM only (DDR2 SO-DIMM)
- Mac Pro: RAM (FB DIMM), Hard disk (SATA II) and Optical Drive (IDE/PATA)
- Mac Mini: RAM (DDR2 SO-DIMM for Intel Mini, DDR1 DIMM for G4 Mini) only. (Note: opening the Mac Mini does not void the warranty but accidental damages like breaking the base’s clips will void the warranty immediately. Do so at your own risk.)

Note: DIMM refers to standard desktop-sized memory modules, while SO-DIMM refers to the small form factor memory modules used primarily in notebooks.

- You own an Intel Mac
- You are running Mac OS X Leopard

Now for the tricky part: which versions of Windows you are allowed to use. To date, only the following versions of Windows are supported by BootCamp:

- 32bit Retail or OEM( not recommended) version of Microsoft Windows XP (SP2 and above only)
or
- 32bit Retail or OEM (not recommended) version of Microsoft Windows Vista Basic, Home Premium, Business or Ultimate
- 64bit version of Windows XP / Windows Vista (only on Mac Pro!)

Versions of Windows not supported by BootCamp:

- Any copy of Windows earlier than Microsoft Windows (SP2). That means that, if you try to BootCamp Windows 2000 or Windows XP (SP1a) or anything earlier, the installer will fail.
- Any form of upgrade copy of Microsoft Windows. (Upgrade copies of Windows XP will also fail)
- 64bit versions of Windows will install but there will be no driver support: the keyboard and trackpad, along with added functionality, will not work. Only the Mac Pro has support for 64bit versions of Windows

** There is a rumor that you can use a loophole to install a full version of Vista on your Mac through an upgrade copy. Because of its dubious legal status, it will not be discussed. **

Almost all apps keep track of your preferences settings in a .plist file. The .plist file is tiny in size (usually less than 4KB). If you want to reclaim every single bit of disc space, you can either go to ~/Library/Preferences to look for and delete it, or use AppZapper, AppDelete, CleanApp etc to automate the process. Most of the time we leave the .plist alone.

If an app comes with an Uninstaller, use it! An Uninstaller usually accompanies complex apps such as Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite that spew support files, additional fonts, add-ons, custom extensions etc all over your harddisk.

So as you can see, uninstalling OS X’s apps is as simple as installing them! Yep, there’s no Registery nor DLL to get mad about.

[1] You can peek inside the special folder by right-clicking the app and select “Show Package Contents” from the pop-up menu.

All versions of OSX actually come with a copy of a download manager known popularly as ‘curl’ built into the Command Line Interface. To use it, there is nothing more needed other than a very small segment of your brain’s memory power, or this guide.

1) Fire up Terminal. You can find Terminal under: “Applications – Utilities” Folder.

2) Next fire up Terminal and you should be confronted with an intimidating screen that appears something like this:

3) For old timers familiar with the MS-DOS interface of C:\> most will smile readily but for new timers to the world of Command Line Interface, they will get pretty intimidated. But no worries. Simply type the following line to download your file:

The line is: curl -C – -O “http://www.xxx.com/123.dmg”
[That is a capital letter 'C' and a capital letter 'O' for 'Orange']

4) You should be downloading the file into your main user folder at this point after you hit Return.

5) In any case the connection breaks for some reason, you should be able to resume the download by typing this command: curl -C – -O -R “http://www.xxx.com/123.dmg”
[That is a capital 'C' for Cat, capital 'O' for 'Orange' with a capital 'R' for 'Resume']

6) To exit from the Terminal program after you had finished downloading everything, simply close the program.

NOTE ABOUT USING CURL: The link required must be a direct pointer to the file in the web or ftp server and not a redirect link as curl doesn’t work very well on redirect links.

Go to Apple Downloads to download the update package. You’ll find two variants of updates, Combo and Delta, available for both Intel and PowerPC Macs (in addition to versions for Mac OS X Server). Be sure to pick the right one:

• Combo Update – Always larger in filesize then the “delta” update. If you read its requirements, you’ll see it’s for upgrading from any minor version. Example: from 10.5 (or 10.5.1, or 10.5.2) to 10.5.3
• Delta Update – The smaller update for one revision update, ie, from 10.5.2 (only) to 10.5.3. It’s the defacto copy when Software Update prompts you to download and install.

I always pick the larger Combo update simply because it contains every files needed to keep my OS running smoothly. By applying the Combo update, it will replace/overwrite existing files that were erroneously altered (by third party apps) or corrupted due to hardware errors. Updating via the Combo Update is, some say, as good as doing a “clean install” and refreshes your OS to factory condition! So be patient and spend a little more time to download it.

Prep the Mac with Onyx

While downloading is taking place, you’ll disconnect all external hardware such as harddisks, sound card, iPod etc. The only devices that should remain connected are your mouse and the keyboard.

After downloading the Combo Update, I’d run ONYX (download) to prepare the system for the update. The first thing Onyx wants to do is verify your harddisk. Let it do so and fix any problem before you go any further. Next go to its “Automation” tab and select the options as shown below:

Click on “Execute” to start the process.

Getting Ready to Update

When ONYX has done its job, you *must* reboot your Mac into Safe Mode. To enter Safe Mode, press and hold the SHIFT key after you hear the boot up gong, and keep holding on until you see the Desktop.

Immediately right after that, double-click on the downloaded Combo Update to begin installation. Do not surf the web! Do not fiddle with your files! Do not do anything at all except pray that power supply will not be interrupted!

If you follow this lengthy procedure your OS update will be perfect. If you don’t, you’ll probably have to spend even more time reinstall your OS and apps from scratch!

The Whys

Starting up in Safe Mode means unnecessary extensions and especially third party apps are not loaded. This ensure your Mac is in the best possible condition for accepting changes to its core, wherein 3rd party apps may lock some essential files for access, for instance. Fixing file permissions essentially does the same. Clearing caches lets OS X forgets and uses only updated data instead of mixing old with new to produce strange results.

Executive Summary

1. Download Combo Update
2. Disconnect external devices
3. Run Onyx’s Automation
4. Re-boot into Safe Mode
5. Install Update

I’m assuming that you are fresh from the Windows world, where downloading applications or programs simply meant downloading a .zip file with an .exe inside the archive.

.dmg files also work in a similar principle: after downloading the .dmg file, double click on it. OS X will verify the disk image and then mount it onto the system as what i would call a ‘virtual drive’. Inside this virtual drive contains one or more of the following:

1) The application, all self-contained inside its package.

2) An installer for your application.

3) An uninstaller.

It is quite easy to differentiate a self-contained application from an installer: the former is represented by its application icon, while the latter is usually represented by an installer icon, which looks like an open box with a huge cube inside of it.

To install a self-contained application into OS X, simple drag and drop the application into your ‘Applications’ folder (or anywhere else of your liking), and you’re done. Easy as pie.

To install an application that has its own installer, double click on the installer icon in the .dmg and follow the instructions. This one is similar to the Windows installation style you are familiar with, except that by default, the installer will dump your application into the ‘Application’ folder by default.

Either way, after you are done, you can unmount or eject the .dmg and trash it away: you won’t need it anymore. Of course, unless the .dmg file came with a bundled uninstaller. In that case, you should hold on to the .dmg file. Should you ever need to uninstall the application, you can make use of the bundled uninstaller to do so. I won’t recommend dragging out the uninstaller package from the .dmg file for a very simple reason: imagine having 5 or more uninstaller packages lying around your ‘Applications’ folder; hunting for the correct uninstaller will take considerable effort.

Now, you’re probably wondering: why shouldn’t i run my applications from within the .dmg file itself? Simply put: anything you work from within a .dmg will not be saved. So let’s say, if you just had a very nice conversation with your buddy on Adium and you want to save the conversation, but you are running Adium off the .dmg instead. Well, say goodbye to your precious log, because the next time you open Adium up from the .dmg, all your settings will have reverted to their defaults.

You’d probably be thinking: “But this is standard OS X operations! How can anyone NOT know?” Unfortunately, just because you and i know about it does not mean the next person does. And after seeing so many of my friends running their Firefox from their .dmg and complaining why all their important bookmarks are lost after the .dmg is ejected, i think a little basic Mac ‘how-to’ is in order.

Now for the longer answer: when we say yes, we mean, yes, you can boot off external devices but under certain conditions, especially for PPC Macs. There is a guaranteed way to successfully boot up both Intel and PPC Macs from an external device, and that is if your external device is connected to the Mac via FireWire.

However, if your external device does not support FireWire, things will get a little tricky.

For Intel Macs:

You won’t really have to lose much sleep over it: EFI in Intel Macs (usually) supports USB device booting. To do so, make sure your Mac is turned off, insert your USB device, power the Mac and hold down the ‘option’ key to bring up the Boot Manager. Next to your Startup disk you should see a picture of a CD or a USB device, depending on what device you have connected to the Mac. Select the desired boot device, and you’re good to go.

In the event the Boot Manager throws up nothing but a white screen, give it a little time for it to detect your hardware. If the white screen persists, restart the Mac by holding down the power button until it turns off, and try again: it usually works after 1 or 2 tries.

For PowerPC Macs

It’s essentially the same as doing it for an Intel Mac. The only difference is whether your PPC Mac supports booting off USB devices. Results for this are varied, at best: there are many who claimed that PPC Macs do not support USB booting, while some have disputed that certain PPC Macs have newer firmware that allows for it. In that case, your best bet will be to purchase a USB-to-Firewire adaptor and try it again. That usually works for most people.

The good news is it’s very easy. The bad news is you’ll need a PowerPC Mac. A big thank you to Bluemint for pointing out an Universal Binaries version of the Real Codec is actually available, making the conversion possible on both PowerPC and Intel Mac. The instructions below are herewith updated.

What you’ll need:

1. ffmpegX – It’s a Mac OS X graphic user interface designed to easily operate more than 20 powerful Unix open-source video and audio processing tools
2. mpeg2enc – Download to your Downloads folder.
3. mencoder & mplayer – Download and decompress the zip file.

Setup:

The first time you launch ffmpegX it’ll ask you to locate three components (items 2 & 3 above). Click on the respective “Locate” buttons to tell ffmpegX where they are. After that, enter your Mac OS X login password (ffmpegX won’t work if your login password is empty) and click the “Install” button.

Download and Install the Real Codec (Universal Binaries)

1. Download the “Mac OS X x86″ binary codec package from one of these links on this page.
2. Unzip the downloaded zip file and install the codec package.
3. Select “Go to folder …” from Finder’s “Go” menu.
4. Type “/usr/local/lib/” in the input text field and click “Go”
5. You should see a “codecs” folder in the new window.
6. Drag the “codecs” folder to your Desktop, and rename it to “reallib”.
7. Move the “reallib” folder to “/Library/Applications Support/ffmpegx/”.

Performing the conversion to .avi

First and foremost, ffmpegX chokes on non-english path/filename, so rename your “小美媚.rmvb” to “xmm.rmvb” first. UB Rockz on any valid unicode Path/Filename.

Drag and drop your rmvb file into the “From” well and just click the “Encode” button to start encoding. Unless you’re an expert user, do not be tempted to change any settings when converting a .rmvb file.

In other words, for a successful run, just drag, drop, and click Encode. What more can you ask for?

Footnotes:

• Re-launch ffmpegX if you messed up the default settings.
• You can close ffmpegX’s main window after clicking Encode; a new stand-alone Progress window shows you the progress.
• Repeat the process to convert more files.
• The “Play” button plays the .rmvb.
• The “Preview” button plays the (partially) converted .avi file.
• Press the Return key to stop playback.
• You can download and install MPlayer to play your .rmvb files. However, it has a bug whereby it only plays video and totally ignores embedded links and other wonderful added features Real is famous for.

1. Launch VLC Player and select the “Streaming/Exporting Wizard…” from its File menu.
2. Select the “Transcode/Save to file” option.
3. Click the “Choose…” button and select your .wmv file.
4. Tick “Transcode video” and select the “H.264″ codec and 1024 kb/s.
5. Tick “Transcode audio” and select the “MPEG 4 Audio” codec and 192 kb/s.
6. Select “MPEG 4/ MP4″ as the Encapsulation format.
7. Click the “Choose…” button and Save As “NewFileName.mp4″ to your Desktop.
8. Click “Finish” to begin transcoding.

In Step 7, tick the “Local playback” option if you want to watch and transcode your .wmv in real-time. Needless to say, do not tick it for speedier transcoding.

You can further use MPEG Streamclip to process the .mp4 to an iPod compliant copy.

To find your Mac’s serial number, use the System Profiler Utility (Application -> Utilities -> System Profiler)

Alternatively, go to “About This Mac” and click twice on the Version Number.

The Serial Number will be blank if you have replaced the logic board. When in doubt, always check the printed serial number on the machine itself. Where can I find it?

To enable Chinese text (both 简体字 and 繁體字 are supported) input, go to System Preferences -> International: Input Menu, and tick on your choices. For the Hanyu Pinyin method, select ITABC for Simplified Chinese, Zhuyin for Traditional Chinese.

After enabling Chinese text input, you should find a new menulet on the top-right corner of your screen. Select your input method, and type away. It’s easy to assign keyboard shortcuts to switch between your default and alternate languages. The default is +SPACE.

Is there a Chinese version of Mac OS X?

Mac OS X operates in many languages including Chinese. To switch to Simplified Chinese, go to System Preferences -> International -> Languages, and drag “简体中文” to the top of the list. After rebooting, you will find Mac OS X’s interface is now in Simplified Chinese. Most apps operate in your new language of choice. Some apps, notably Firefox and Adobe’s products, do not support multi-languages. You will have to download or purchase a language-specific version from the publisher.

The good news is it’s very easy. The bad news is you’ll need a PowerPC Mac.

What you’ll need:

1. ffmpegX – It’s a Mac OS X graphic user interface designed to easily operate more than 20 powerful Unix open-source video and audio processing tools
2. mpeg2enc – Download to your Downloads folder.
3. mencoder & mplayer – Download and decompress the zip file.
4. reallibs – Download, decompress the zip, rename the folder as “reallib”, and copy it into /Library/Application Support/ffmpegX. You’ll create the “ffmpegX” folder (cAsE sensitive) if it doesn’t exists.

Setup:

The first time you launch ffmpegX it’ll ask you to locate three components (items 2 & 3 above). Click on the respective “Locate” buttons to tell ffmpegX where they are. After that, enter your Mac OS X login password (ffmpegX won’t work if your login password is empty.)

Performing the conversion to .avi

First and foremost, the conversion process chokes on non-english path/filename, so rename your 小美媚.rmvb to xmm.rmvb first.

Drag and drop your rmvb file into the “From” well and just click the “Encode” button to start encoding. Do not be tempted to change any settings when converting a .rmvb file. If you want a different output format (iPod’s mp4, mpeg1 VCD, DivX 6 etc), then do so after ffmpegX has converted it to .avi first. Re-launch ffmpegX if you messed up its default settings.

In other words, for a successful run, just drag, drop, and click Encode.

BTW, you can close ffmpegX’s main window after clicking Encode; a new and stand-alone Progress window shows you the progress.

Flip4Mac WMV is comprised of a collection of QuickTime™ components that enables Mac OS X users to play, import and export Windows™ Media files using QuickTime™-based applications. Both the PowerPC and Intel-based Macintosh systems are supported, on Mac OS X version 10.3.9 and QuickTime™ version 6.5 or later.

You can download Flip4Mac WMV free of charge, and if you purchase an upgrade, you can import Windows Media files for editing, create Windows Media files for distribution, and export to other formats. Note that this product does not support files that are protected with Windows Media digital rights management (DRM).

Download flip4mac

If you like, here’s Microsoft’s own Windows Media Player 9 for Mac OS X. It’s an obsolete app (it was last updated on Nov 8, 2003) but the PowerPC app does play some DRM files and still runs fine in an Intel Mac Leopard. You’ll need Stuffit Expander to decompress the .sitx download.

• “Get Info” (Command+I) on the file with an icon you want to change.
• Drag and drop the file with the replacement icon directly onto the Get Info icon well .

In Tiger:

• “Get Info” (Command+I) on the file with the icon you want to use. Then click on the little icon near the top-left corner of the Get Info window. You’ll noticed the icon has a faint blue outline after you click on it. Now copy the icon by pressing Command+C.
• Repeat the above for the file with its icon you want to replace, but Paste (Command+V) the copied icon instead.

Restore Default Icon

To remove a custom icon, just click the Get Info’s icon well and press the Delete button on your keyboard.

You can’t change an icon if you do not have write permission to the file.

There are many apps out there that can convert .avi video to mp4 video for playback on iPod. My favorite is the excellent freeware, MPEG Streamclip.

MPEG Streamclip was originally developed for Mac OS X, and has been ported to the Windows platform. The instructions here is based on the Mac OS X version.

• Launch MPEG Streamclip.
• Drag and drop the .avi file into its window.
  

  Mac OS X: Please install the Perian codec first if MPEG Streamclip cannot load your .avi file.
  Windows: Please install K-Lite codec first if MPEG Streamclip cannot load your .avi file.

• Select “Export to MPEG-4…” from the File menu.
• Click on the “iTunes…” button.
• Select your iPod device from the list, and click on OK.
  

  Choose iPhone for iPod touch.

• Now click on the “Make MPEG-4″ button to start the conversion.
  

  Please leave all the settings alone unless you know what you are doing.

You can convert a batch of .avi files by selecting “Batch List” from the “List” menu.

Explore around the app; you can also use it to convert DVD Video Disc, VideoCD, and in fact, any video file that QuickTime can playback. I’m not sure about the Windows version but MPEG Streamclip for Mac OS X cannot handle Real Video, but you can use ffmpegX to do it (instructions.)

Windows users probably knows about the K-Lite Codec Pack? In the simple and elegant world of Mac OS X, we have The Perian! It’s “The Swiss Army Knife for QuickTime(tm)”. I don’t know what that means, but I do know that ever since it was created I have dumped every codecs (except for the Apple mpeg2 codec) I have in my Mac OS X.

Just install it.

Alternatively, you can also use the VLC Media Player to play most video files, and especially those that aren’t standard compliant.

For Mac OS X, you’ll use Split&Concat to do it instead.

You can also use Split&Concat to split a large file. The resulting files are 100% HJSplit compatible.