There's a patch for that

Apple has released a fix for the SSL bug. Go update your Mavericks Mac now! Here are the details.

And if you haven't updated your phone, do it now. See my previous post.

Curing Mal de Mac

Sometimes general or vague problems with a Mac - what I call Mal de Mac - can be solved by running Disk Utility and repairing the hard drive. But, you need to prepare properly. Disk Utility on your Mac will not repair your hard drive unless you follow the following steps:

If you are running OS 10.7 or later, restart your Mac and hold down the Command key and the R key (Command-R), and keep holding them until the Apple icon appears. After your Mac has finished starting up, you will see a desktop with an OS X menu bar and a "Mac OS X Utilities" application window. You can run Disk Utility and repair your drive from here.

If you have an older system, the best bet is to start up from your Install Disk. Again, you can’t repair the current startup volume with the Disk Utility that's on your Mac. You need to start up from a Mac OS X Install Disk and run Disk Utility from there. But many people, especially those who bought used or inherited an old Mac from a friend, may not have an Install Disk handy. Others simply no longer have a working optical drive, but soldier on.

If you have an older system, and no startup discs, here's another thing you can try:

Shut down your Mac in the usual way.
Boot in "single-user mode" by holding down Command-S at startup.
When you see the text prompt, type:

fsck -fy and hit <RETURN>

When it's done, type:

reboot and hit <RETURN>

Full instructions (and warnings) are found on this official Apple page.

One Less Mac Mail Peeve

In Apple Mail, hovering over an e-mail address in the “To” or “From” field shows a drop-down arrow that you can click to reveal a hidden menu. From that menu, you can copy the email address to your clipboard.

The peeve? It copies it like this:

Juan Sirrakah <juan@whodat.com>

...which is kind of a pain when you just want to copy an email address and paste it somewhere besides another Apple mail message address header.

So, if you'd like it to copy and paste just this:

juan@whodat.com

...do this:

Quit Mail, fire up "Terminal^†," and paste this into it (all on one line, no returns):

defaults write com.apple.mail AddressesIncludeNameOnPasteboard -bool NO

and then hit"enter/Return." Now run Mail and try it out. Cool?

To change the behavior back:

Quit Mail, fire up "Terminal" and paste this into it (all on one line, no returns):

defaults write com.apple.mail AddressesIncludeNameOnPasteboard -bool NO

and then hit"enter/Return."

For the most part, your Mac will do anything you want it to, you just need to know how to ask. If you are having trouble communicating with your Mac and you wish it would listen to you a little better, give me a call.

The White Collar Handyman is also The Mac Whisperer. There are no bad Macs... only inexperienced owners! ;-)

^†found in your "Utilities" folder. Don't be afraid, Terminal doesn't bite!

Silent Mac?

Are you no longer hearing a new mail alert?

Has your trash sound, delete sound, copy complete sound or other "user interface audio" disappeared?

Do your sound preferences seem to be OK?

Before you restart your system, try this:

1. Open "Activity Monitor" which is in your "Utilities" folder inside your "Applications" folder 
2. Search for "coreaudiod"
3. Once found, click on it so that it is highlighted.
4. Now, click on "Quit Process" in the upper left part of the window. 
5. Click on "Quit" in the resulting dialog

Voilà!<sup>*



*</sup>Pet Peeve Alert: Why do people write and say "Walla!" at the end of some kind of revelatory statement? Are they being funny and I just don't get it, or do they have no idea that the word is "Voilà" and that the "v" is not silent?

Ready for Mountain Lion?

Word on the street is that Apple releases Mountain Lion, OS 10.8, tomorrow. No doubt, if you have a Mac, you're excited and may want to upgrade, ASAP. Here's a few things to consider:

1. If you really really depend on your Mac, maybe wait a couple of days? What folks in the biz call ".0 releases" are famous for delighting many AND completely screwing up others. As they say, "pioneers get arrows in their backs." Why not wait and let the bold go where no one's gone before, and read a few reports about how it went for them before you offer up your fine running machine to the gods of software upgrades?

If you decide to ignore that, my wisest advice, then how about this? Backup, backup, backup and utilize Utilities!

2. Back up your whole hard drive. That shouldn't be a big deal because you do that all the time, right? If not, get in the habit. Between low prices on hard drives, and great software including the built in Time Machine and the free Carbon Copy Cloner ("CCC"), you have no excuse not to, and a few million reasons (counted in megabytes!) that you must. Even if you run TimeMachine regularly, there's nothing like the bootable, complete hard drive clone that CCC will create for you when it comes to disaster recovery. Recovering your system from TimeMachine is certainly doable. Just don't count on doing anything else for hours - maybe days - if that's what you end up having to do!

3. Run Disk Utility. Make sure your hard drive reports no errors and that your disk permissions are OK. If Disk Utility finds any errors, have it fix them and run it again until it reports a clean system.

4. If you've moved any Apple installed software, move it back or reinstall it. Many times, Apple likes to see its stuff where it put it when it's making upgrades.

5. Run Cocktail, Onyx and DiskWarrior if you have them. Now is the time to run any utility you have that can help insure that your hard drive and your system software are in order.

6. Back up again now that everything is perfect. I'm not kidding.

7. Think again about my first piece of advice. I'm serious.

8. Good luck.

9. Let me know how it went!

Mac OS X Lion and Signing PDFs

Now here's an awesome, but frequently overlooked feature that's built right in to the Macintosh operating system: you can sign PDFs with your actual signature! Did you know that?

How many times have you printed out the PDF, signed it, scanned it, shredded it and then emailed the scan back to the sender? No more. Here's how:

1. Sign your name as you would like it to appear in the document on a plain white piece of paper.
2. Open your PDF with Preview.
3. If you don't see the "Annotations Toolbar, use the menu View > Show Annotations Toolbar (or just type Command-Shift-A)
4. Look for the Signatures pop-up in the Annotation menu that now runs across the top of the document window.
5. Click on that, and choose "Create Signature from Built-in iSight…"
6. Line up the signature with the line in the Signature Capture preview window, and click "Accept."
7. Now, click where in the document you would like your signature to appear.

You can move the signature around, and even resize it. (Unlike resizing many other objects, you don't even need to hold Shift Key down as you resize it so your signature doesn't get all distorted.)

When you're happy, just hit the Enter key, and save the document!

You can store several versions of your signature in Preview, and in the future just choose the one you want to use from the pop-up menu.

How cool is that?

There are many other somewhat hidden features in Mac Lion that can make your life a lot easier. I'll post some here on a regular basis. If you can't wait, perhaps you would like a Lion Lesson or some basic Mac OS coaching. I'm here for you!

Too Much of a Good Thing?

I don't know about you, but for me, Time Machine runs too often and takes up too much of my Mac's CPU (slows down my work), bandwidth (slows down my network connection) and too much disk space (too many backups too often). This is particularly annoying when I am working online, on photo or video editing, or sometimes just listening to music and surfing.

What is to be done?

Simple answer, download and install TimeMachineScheduler. It's a free Preference Pane that will allow you to set the interval between backups to

anywhere from 1 to 12 hours, and to not back up at all between certain hours. It runs on Intel Macs, OS 10

.5+. You could do this by messing with hidden Apple preference files and a text editor, which is how I used to do it, but why bother when something as simple and elegant as TimeMachineScheduler is available.

direct download

Fsck your Sparse Bundle!: A Quick P.S. on the Time Machine Verification Failure

I'm happy to report that I found a way to fix the Time Machine backup that I wrote about on Monday, and my Time Machine backups are fully restored.

If you find yourself with a Time Machine backup or Time Capsule that gives you the message...

Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you

...here are a couple of ideas on how to fix it:

1. Go fsck your sparse bundle! It's not a vulgarity, it's real Linux advice! Basically, it's Disk Utilities on steroids. Follow the instructions I found here. They look scary but they're really not that bad.

or

2. Give me a call.

OS X: Safe for now

The patch released yesterday will stop new infections of Flashback.k. You should check to see if your Mac has already been infected. Instructions for how to check are found at this post.


Apple releases Java security updates | Macworld

Does the Apple Java Update Fix the Flashback.k Vulnerability?

Who knows? It probably does. The inscrutable folks in Cupertino never comment on their security updates. Just, download and install the update anyhow.

Bummer Dude... That's a Bad Flashback.k

Seriously, there's a malicious little Trojan going around the Mac world. It's known as Flashback.k

If you don't yet have it, the official word seems to be to disable Java in your browsers, until Apple publishes a patch. To do this in Safari go to the "Safari Menu," choose "Preferences..." and then select the "Security" tab and uncheck (if checked) the "Enable Java" box.

In Firefox, it's "Tools," "Add-ons," then choose the "plug-ins" tab and look for "Java Plug-in" and disable it.

But, Mr. Handyman, how do I know if I have it?

Fire up the Terminal application, found in your Utilities folder, paste in the following:

defaults read /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment (and hit Return)

The answer you hope to get is "The domain/default pair of (/Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info, LSEnvironment) does not exist"

Then paste in the following:

defaults read /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment

The answer you hope to get is "The domain/default pair of (/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/Info, LSEnvironment) does not exist"

If you got anything else, Bummer, Dude. You've got Flashback.k. There's a fairly complicated explanation about how to get rid of it, found here. Do ALL of that, and then change all your Internet passwords, starting with Banks and Credit Cards.

Or call me. I can help.