When a program runs on OS X it will keep a log of it’s activity. This often happens when it encounters an error. These logs are written to a special set of text files on your Mac in the /var/log folder. Rather than force you to look at some of the UNIX underpinnings you can use the Console.

Launch the Console by opening the Utilities folder on your Mac. On start up, OS X will inspect your log files and present them in Console window.

What you are going to see will likely not make any sense to you. However, here is the secret to the Console. It doesn’t necessarily have to! Here is how I troubleshoot problems using the Console.

All of the entries in the Console are time stamped meaning that everytime the program writes a log entry the date and time of the entry are recorded. I look through the log files occasionally looking for messages that are repeated often and at a high frequency. Sometimes the log will tell you which program in particular is generating the log. Sometime it won’t.

In either case, if you see some entries which you think are questionable copy the entry and paste it into Google. If it is an error of any significance it’s likely that someone else has encountered the problem and found the solution.

I ran into this problem not too long ago with the program Carbon Copy Cloner. It’s a backup program I demoed and removed from my system. However there was no uninstall program so the Mac was trying to load the program every few minutes in order to backup my Mac. I would never of known this unless I looked at the Console.

Check out the Console even if you are not a very technical user. It’s a great way to get a handle on what’s going on under the hood. It’s also a great way to spot problems.

Spotlight has a handy feature that allows you to exclude certain directories from the Spotlight results. You can use it to exclude junk email folder, temporary directories and even Time Machine backup volumes. It’s pretty easy to setup.

First, open up the Spotlight Preferences Pane. Click System Preferences -> Spotlight.

Next, click the Privacy Button

This opens up a list of directories that you wish to exclude from your results. Choose them and click ok. You’ll see the directories appear in the Privacy list.

Hope that helps you keep your Spotlight results more relevant.

I too have the same problem as you. I spent hours scouring the Internet for instructions on how to convert my FLAC and APE files into something I could bring into iTunes. I found some instructions for doing this in Windows, some plugins that I could hack into Quicktime. Each solution I found seemed to be rather convoluted.

After spending a few hours on searching for this, I was resigned to write some of my own Apple Script to perform this process. Just before I started, I came across a tool that could convert all of my lossless audio files to Apple formats or MP3s. Incredibly, this program was free.

Enter XLD

XLD is an open source application Mac application that will convert audio file formats from one format to another. It’s really simple. It was written by a Japanese Mac developer so it was a bit of a challenge to find on the Internet.

Download XLD from this link and follow the instructions below.

Launch XLD

When you do, you’ll see that not much has really changed. You need to first setup XLD to convert to the format you’re interested in. Select XLD then preferences from the menu bar. This will open the following dialog

The default output format is WAV. This is another lossless format originally for Windows. We want to change that to either MPEG-4 AAC or Apple Lossless. Click the Output dropdown menu and select the format you want to convert to.

I generally convert to MPEG-4 AAC. The default settings for this format are not that great so you may want to bump them up a bit. Select Option to the right of the output dropdown list and the make the following adjustments.

You also want to make sure that the track and title information or metadata is preserved when you convert the audio formats. This will ensure that the song titles show up in iTunes properly. Select the Metadata menu and make sure it is setup like the screen shot below.

Now you’re ready to convert. Select Open from the XLD File menu, select the File or Files you want to convert, then sit back and relax. It’s that easy. It’s also really fast. You should be finished in a few minutes.

At this point, you can copy the files into iTunes and you’re done.

There you have it a super easy way to convert FLAC files to an iTunes compatible format. You didn’t even need to get your hands dirty.

As you know you can use Spotlight from a Finder window to search for files. Here for example, I’m searching for all the Indie MP3s in my music collection.

So here is the cool part. If you click the Save button you are given the option to put the search into the Sidebar. Once you do this then anytime you need to run a search you can just click the icon in the side bar. Sweet.

I am a multiple Mac household. I have a MacBook Pro for work, my wife has a MacBook and my kids and I share an iMac as the family computer. I was keeping my iTunes library on my iMac but since I’ve begun using my MacBook Pro I’ve wanted to have my music there.

What I really want to do is have an easy way to keep both the iTunes library on my iMac and MacBook Pro synchronized. After doing some searching around I found that it’s pretty easy to do with some features built right into Mac OS X.

At the end of this article you should be able to sync your iTunes library from one Mac to another.

Note that I only intend to do a one way sync. This means I’ve picked one of my two libraries to act as the master library that will sync to the second library. It’s possible to sync both ways but I feel it is safer to just go one way.

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Getting Started

The first step is to ensure that each Mac can see each other. Open up the Finder window on each Mac and look in the sidebar (the left side of the Finder window). You should be able to see the other machine. If you see it you have file sharing enabled. If you can’t, you need to enable file sharing following the steps below.

Enable File Sharing

Open System Preferences and select Sharing. Then ensure that the check box for File Sharing is checked. This will allow you to access each file using the Apple Filing Protocol (AFP)

Sync iTunes using Automator

Ok, so now that you have your two machines seeing each other the next step is to actually transfer your library from one machine to another.

Before we get to that, let’s think about the tasks we need to accomplish. For this application we need to do the following:

1. Connect Mac A to Mac B
2. Copy the iTunes Library from Mac A to Mac B
3. Disconnect Mac M from Mac A

In order to do this we’re going to turn to some UNIX shell scripting and Automator. Don’t worry if you don’t know what UNIX shell scripting is. It’s super easy and will help you realize the power underneath the hood of your Mac.

Launch Automator

Open Automator and select that you want to create a new Workflow. We can save this as an application later.

Next, we need to setup our Automator Workflow. Let’s think back to the steps we identified. The first step is Connect Mac A to Mac B. We can do this with the Get Specified Servers Action. Find it from the list of actions and drag it over to the Workflow window.

Now that it’s here, you need to add the target Mac’s file share information. Select Add and then select the computer from the list. Then append the name of the user on the target machine that has the iTunes library. In my case it’s Dad so I add /Dad to the name of the server and click Ok.

The next step is to actually connect to that server. Grab the Connect to Servers action and drag it below the last action. Once the connection is made, we run the command that actually copies the files. For  that we turn to a powerful UNIX command rsync.

Drag the Run Shell Script into your workspace and attach it below the last action. Now, you can enter the command that performs the copy. Copy and paste the following.

rsync -av --force --delete --dry-run \
~/Music/iTunes /Volumes/Dad/Music > ~/Documents/iTunesSync.log

The rsync utility is essentially a backup tool used to keep directories synchronized. Unlike a simple file copy rsync looks at things like the size and date of a file to decide whether or not it should do the copy. The first time you do your sync it will take a while. After that, every time you run rsync it will only copy over the files that change.

So you know what’s going on, let’s walk through each of these options. The -av option tells rsync two things 1) this is archive mode which tells rsync to behave in a way that works well for backups and 2) be verbose and tell us what you are doing. The –delete switch will remove files from Mac B that are no longer on Mac A. This way if you remove files in your iTunes library rsync will reflect those deletions in the other iTunes library.

The switch –dry-run is your safety net while we’re building this script. With the –dry-run option we won’t actually copy the files. When we are all done, we’ll remove the switch.

The next two parameters are the source path and the destination path. The source path is where your main iTunes library is. Typically it’s in your home directory (~) in Music/iTunes. Change this as needed. The destination path is the location where we are sending this iTunes library to. For me it is /Volumes/Dad/Music. For you it is whatever directory you connected to when you ran the Get Specified Servers Automator action.

Finally we are going to send the output of rsync to a file so we can review it later to make sure everything worked ok.

This was the most complicated part of the Workflow. The next and final step is to disconnect the two computers. Drag the Eject Disk action and attach it below the Run Shell Script action.

At the end of the process you Workflow should look like this.

Testing the Workflow

Now that you’ve built the workflow, let’s test it. You’re going to run the workflow and look at the log file to see if things look ok. If everything is ok we can remove the –dry-run switch

Note that what we’re doing could be dangerous! If you setup the rsync command incorrectly you could end up deleting your iTunes library. This is why we use –dry-run first. Make sure you have a backup of your library handy in case something goes wrong.We’re not responsible if you hose your music library.

Ok, with that bit out of the way, let’s run the test. Click the play button to run the automator workflow.

The first thing that may happen is you are prompted for a password. This is part of the network connection process. Choose the user name you use to login to the account with the iTunes library.

As Automator works through each step of the process, you’ll see it place a green check next to each action. The longest part of the process is going to be rsync. Remember though at this stage we are not actually copying files so this still should only take a few minutes to complete.

When everything is finished we’re going to look at the results. Open up your Documents folder and look for the files iTunesSync.log. Open that up in a text editor and look at what is going on. You should see a list of files that rsync is trying to copy. If this seems ok to you then you’re ready for a live test.

Remove –dry-run from the shell script. Now, save the Automator Workflow. Choose File->Save As. Then, place it somewhere you will remember it. I put mine in ~/Applications and change the File Format from Application. This will let you run it directly without first going into Automator.

Once it is saved, click the Play button again and go make a sandwich you’ll be waiting for a while.

If you want to tune in to what is happening you can do a little more UNIX-fu. Run the Terminal command. In the Terminal Window, go to the ~/Documents folder (or where ever you put your iTunesSync.log file) and type the following:

tail -f iTunesSync.log

This will let you watch what is happening as the Automator script runs.

Conclusion

That’s it. You’re now able to keep your iTunes libraries in sync. What I find really cool about this is it touches on a lot of more advanced things you can do in OS X. Automator let’s you fairly easily create your own programs to solve problems and UNIX shell commands which let you do some pretty powerful things.

The programs in the Utilities folder help you fine tune, troubleshoot and configure your Mac system. Some of these programs you will likely never use but it’s good to know they are there in case you run into problems with your system.

The programs are listed below. Some of the programs that you will use more often have their own article associated with them. Click through the links for more information.

Activity Monitor

The Activity Monitor let’s you look at the various things that are going on your Mac in real time. You can monitor what programs are using your system memory or hogging your CPU. You can also monitor programs that are accessing your disk drives, your network.

Airport Utility

If you have the Mac wi-fi router AirPort this utility allows you to manage the configuration.

AppleScript Editor

AppleScript is the scripting language included with OS X. With AppleScript you can build your applications that allow you to control your Mac from a simple to use language. AppleScript Editor (formerly Script Editor) is a built in editor that allows you to create your own scripts.

Audio MIDI Setup

Musicians around the world chose to use Mac computers because of the great audio applications that are available for it. If you play a musical instrument and would like to connect it to your Mac you will use this utility.

There are two tabs in this program, Audio Devices and MIDI. Audio devices allows you to adjust the settings on all of the audio input and outputs on your Mac.

The second is MIDI Devices. MIDI, the Music Instrument Digital Interface is a language that is spoken between electronic instruments. Your Mac can speak it too. If you have a keyboard or other MIDI device this utility will help you get it connected to your Mac.

Bluetooth File Exchange

Bluetooth is the wireless protocol used by your cellphone and cellphone accessories. With it you can send files back and forth between Bluetooth equipped devices. This utility allows you to setup your devices so they talk to each other.

Boot Camp Assistant

Boot Camp is the multi boot feature included in OS X that allows you to install Windows XP or Vista onto your Mac. It’s an alternative to using a virtual machine.

If you intend to run a copy of Windows you will need this program to help you set things up.

ColorSync Utility

If you are doing graphic design work on your Mac you know how important it is that there is consistency between how colors work on your display and other mediums. Apple developed Color Sync as a way to standardize colors on multiple devices.

You can use the ColorSync Utility in Mac OS X to modify an image file. Adding effects, changing color spaces, resampling images or correct the color and brightness of an image are all possible.

Console

The Console is an awesome utility for troubleshooting your Mac. It rolls up all of the system logs and presents them in an easily accessible form.

Digital Color Meter

The Digital Color Meter is a utility that lets you display the color value of any pixel on your screen. It’s useful if you are doing graphics design work and need to match a color with something on the screen.

Disk Utility

Disk Utility is a general purpose disk management application. With Disk Utility you can repair hard drives, erase disks, partition disks, manage disk image files (DMG). If you have a server you can also manage RAID sets.

Grab

Grab lets you take screen shots of your Mac desktop or applications and save them in various formats

Grapher

If you are using your Mac for scientific work or are a student check out Grapher. Grapher is a data visualization tool built into Mac OS X. With Grapher you can input equations and visualize the results.

After you’ve created your graph you can play around with the appearance of the graph and create animations that you can share with others.

Java Preferences

Java is a technology that allows you to write applications that will run on a variety of computers. This utility allows you to setup the preferences of the Java Virtual Machine. The Java Virtual Machine is a computer inside your computer that runs Java programs.

Keychain Access

Your keychain is where OS X stores various system and website passwords. If you use a program that requires a password you often are prompted if you want to save it into your Keychain. This program allows you to manage your keychain. If you want to change or remove any of the passwords in your keychain use Keychain Access.

Migration Assistant

If you purchase a new Mac and want to transfer the contents of your old Mac onto your new Mac you run the Migration Assistant. The Migration Assistant will make a mirror of your old Mac. It preserves your setings, preferences, applications and brings over all of your documents.

Network Utility

Network Utility is a swiss army knife tool for testing your network connections. If you think something is going wrong with your network, start by looking here.

Podcast Capture

If you are using your Mac to record podcasts and are sending them to Podcast Producer you will use this Utility. If you don’t know what Podcast Producer is you likely will not need this program.

Raid Utility

Raid is a disc drive protocol designed for high reliability. If you have a Mac Pro and a bank of hard drives you can configure them to run as a RAID array. This utility allows you to setup the array.

Remote Install Mac OS X

If you are lucky enough to have a MacBook Air one thing you might notice is that it doesn’t have an optical drive. This could cause you a problem if you need to reinstall the operating system. Remote Install Mac OS X will allow you to install OS X on your MacBook Air if you have access to another Mac computer.

Spaces

Spaces allows you to have multiple virtual desktops. It’s typically accessed via a hotkey on your keyboard. When you press the hotkey, it runs this utility. You will likely never need to run it on it’s own.

System Profiler

System Profiler is a great troubleshooting tool and one you should become familiar with. When you run System Profiler it takes a snapshot of your entire Mac. It will capture information about your Mac hardware, your Network setup and also the installed Applications on your machine.

It’s most useful when you need to call Apple about a problem with your system because you can export this snapshot and send it to them.

Terminal

Terminal is your window in to the wonderful world of UNIX. Terminal allows you to access all of the great UNIX commands that are installed into OS X.

VoiceOver Utility

The Mac is an accessible operating system. This means that out of the box it is designed so that someone with limited vision can still use the system. It does this with VoiceOver. VoiceOver will enable your Mac to speak to you. Someone with limited vision can use it to read email, highlight and read sentences, read aloud the web.

This utility will allow you to setup how VoiceOver should behave.

X11

The Mac OS X operating system is based on UNIX (if you’ve heard of LINUX this is his big brother). Because of this it can run many applications originally written for UNIX. The X Windows System is the graphical user interface (UI) used by UNIX for their desktop interface and GUI programs. In order to run X programs you need an X Windows System. The X11 Utility provides the environment for you to run X Windows programs on your Mac.

Most people won’t need this and in fact it isn’t installed by default. If you need to run an X Windows application and this program isn’t available you can find it as an optional install on your OS X installation disc.

Conclusion

There you have it, a whirl-wind tour of the Utilities on your Mac. It’s important to have an understanding of the tools in your toolbox in case something is wrong. I hope this gave you enough information to get started. If you have questions about specific utilities please feel free to ask it over in our forums.

I started thinking about all the cool things that I do with LaunchBar and the more I thought about it the more new ideas came my way.
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Below is a list of all the awesome things you can do with LaunchBar that you might not of realized. I describe each item along with the shortcut command to perform the action. Remember for each of these actions you need to first invoke LaunchBar (Option+Space).

Application Launcher

1. Ok, we’ll start with the basics. LaunchBar is an application launcher

If you are unfamiliar with LaunchPad it works like this. You type a keyboard shortcut to invoke LaunchBar, then in the LaunchBar window you begin to type a command. Press return and the command is carried out. So, in my setup if I want to launch Safari I would type:

• Cmd+Space
• Type Safari
• Press Enter

What’s cool about LaunchBar is that it learns which commands I use most frequently. After using Safari a few times from LaunchBar I will likely only need to type “S” rather than “Safari” to launch Safari.

If you are a heavy Spotlight user you might be saying “So, what. I can do that with Spotlight.” True, but LaunchBar can do so much more. Read on for the rest of the list.

2. In addition to Applications, you can launch System Preference Panes by invoking LaunchBar (Cmd+Space) and typing the name of the preference Pane

3. You can also run Terminal commands – Type Run and press SPACE then type the name of the Terminal command (i.e., top)

Control iTunes

LaunchBar is great if you use iTunes for your music library. Without your hands leaving the keyboard you can:

1. Start Playing iTunes – iTunes – Play
2. Jump to the Next Song – iTunes – Next Song
3. Jump to a Previous Song – iTunes – Previous Song
4. Rate iTunes Songs – Rate Song
5. Find a song in your iTunes Library – Type the name of the song
6. Then jump to the album that the song belongs to. – Type the name of the song then press the right arrow
7. Create a Genius playlist around the song that is playing – Type Genius
8. Increase your Mac speaker volume – Type Increase Volume
9. Decrease your Mac speaker volume – Type Decrease Volume
10. Mute your speakers – Type Toggle Mute
11. Unmute your speaker – Type Toggle Mute

Navigate Your Mac

LaunchBar makes it simple to move around the files and folders on your computer. The hyperlinks will take you to some 3rd party scripts that will perform the specified action.

1. Open a specific folder in Finder – Type the name of the Folder
2. Navigate that folder using the arrow keys
3. Switch between running applications – Invoke LaunchBar (Cmd+Space) then press Cmd+Space repeatedly and you’ll see it select each application
4. Open a specific folder in Terminal – Type the name of the Folder then Tab and Select Terminal
5. Add spotlight tags to files or folders
6. Look at your clipboard history – Type Clipboard History then press the right arrow
7. Pick an item in your clipboard to paste – Follow 14 then use the up/down arrow to select the item. Press enter will copy it to the cursor location.

Control Your Mac

1. Take a screen shot – Type Screen
2. Quit an application – Type Quit
3. Quit all the running applications in your system – Type Quit All
4. Switch to the Login Window – Type Login
5. Switch Users – Type in a username and press Enter
6. Logout – Type Logout
7. Empty the Trash – Type Empty Trash
8. Open the Trash – Type Open Trash
9. Check the date – Type Date
10. Then copy it to the clipboard with Cmd-C
11. Eject a DVD – Type Eject

Access the Internet

1. Get your IP Address – Type Show IP Address
2. Tweet
3. Create a tiny URL – Type URL
4. Search Google – Type Google then press Return. Type in your search query and press Return. This takes advantage of the Search Template feature of LaunchBar. With it, you can create custom searches for your favorite websites. For example you can
5. Search Lifehacker by creating this template – http://lifehacker.com/search/*
6. Start playing a station on Pandora with this template – http://www.pandora.com/#/stations/create/*
7. Look something up in Wikipedia – Type WIK select Wikipedia and press the SPACEBAR

Control Applications

1. Create iCal Events – Type the name of your calendar and press SPACE. Then enter description @ date [and time]
2. Update your todo list – Type the name of your calendar and press SPACE. Then enter description
3. Email a document – Type Send File
4. Send an email to an individual – Type the name of a contact, press SPACE, highlight an email address and press return.
5. Open a web browser to a specific location – Type the name of a website. When you type the dot (.) LaunchBar will switch to a browser search box.
6. Search your browsers history – Type the name of a website
7. Get the definition of a word – Type Dictonary then press SPACE, then type your word.
8. Remind yourself to pickup a pizza
9. Lock your computer and put it to sleep
10. Quickly send an IM message
11. Sync your iPhone

Conclusion

That’s how I use LaunchBar. What’s so great about this program is that it can be tailored to the behavior of each user. If you use LaunchBar, we’d love to hear in the comments how you use it. If you don’t yet have LaunchBar, what are you waiting for?

Please help us spread the word by Retweeting this article.

If you highlight a folder and press the Cmd plus the arrow keys some cool stuff happens. Here you go.

Cmd+Right Arrow will open the contents of the folder in your current window

Cmd+Left Arrow will close the open folder in the current window

Cmd+Down Arrow will open the the folder in the existing Finder window

Cmd+Up Arrow will open the parent folder in the existing Finder window.

Try them today. Pretty sweet.

While not apparent on the Handbrake website this new version adds some great tweaks to the existing feature set including:

• BluRay disc structure support. (No decryption support)
• Updated Libraries (x264, ffmpeg)
• SSA Subtitle support. (Including burn-in)
• MP3 audio now supported in MP4 files (Note: Limited Player compatibility)
• VOBSUB subtitle now supported in MP4 files (Note: Limited Player compatibility)
• Updated Presets for newer devices and better quality
• AC3 encoding support.
• Improved DVD Main Feature detection (when using dvdnav)
• Universal audio downmix support (all audio types can be downmixed)
• Point*to*Point encoding (second or frame start and end times)
• Peak framerate option (Capped VFR)

All GUIs

• Updated x264 Advanced Panel
• Video Quality Slider drops % value and only shows RF for x264
• Batch Scan (Scan Multiple files at once. N.B: Does not include multiple VIDEO_TS folders / Image files)
• Many Bug fixes
• Many Tweaks to improve usability.
• Ability to edit queue jobs

Mac GUI

• New Audio Panel supporting >4 Audio Tracks
• VLC detection in /Applications and ~/Applications
• Multiple instance support

The ability to read the Blu-ray disc structure. This allows Handbrake to rip Blu-ray discs much easier than it did before. It still won’t decrypt them but there are other tools for that.

I have my DVD player setup so that it doesn’t launch any application when you insert a disc. You can also customize it to open a different application. The first step is to open the System Preferences. Then, click the CDs & DVD preference

When you click on this it opens the preferences that lets you set the action you want to take for each device.

If you insert a blank DVD or CD you can specify whether or not to launch a disc burning application. The default, Ask what to do is generally a good setting for blanks.

If you insert a disc with content on it, music, pictures or video you can take additional actions. The options above the horizontal line are default behaviors. If you click Open other application you can browse to a specific OS X application. Run script is useful if you have any custom actions you want to perform on the disc. Finally, Ignore will do nothing. For DVDs, I prefer Ignore.