When in these situations, it can be inconvenient to look through System Preferences > Energy Saver until you find the settings needed and then you must remember to re-enable your original settings when you are done. With OS X 10.8, Mountain Lion, we are able to stop our Macs from sleeping for a period of time from our command line with the caffeinate command. Let’s take a look at how to use this command, and some alternatives for older machines.

Caffeinate and How to Use It

The caffeinate command is used to prevent a Mac from going to sleep. The simplest way to use this command is to run the following command in the terminal.

caffeinate

When run, the cursor will move down to a blank line where it will stay until you tell the command to stop running or close the terminal. While running, caffeinate will prevent your Mac from sleeping. To stop the process from running, you can press Ctrl+C which will instantly end the process, and return you to the command prompt.

For some situations, such as while watching a movie, this may be fine. Other times, you may prefer to set the duration you would like to prevent the Mac from sleeping. Luckily, Apple has made this rather easy to accomplish by using the -t option to your command, followed by the time in seconds. For example, if you wanted to prevent your Mac from sleeping for 5 hours, you would run the following command:

caffeinate -t 18000

The caffeinate command can also be linked to other commands, such as cloning a git repository, by linking caffeinate to a specific command. This can be done in the following way:

caffeinate [command_you_want_to_link] -arguments

Tip: The brackets around the command ([command_you_want_to_link]) are there for demonstation, but would not be used around a normal command such as open.

Using Caffeinate’s Options

Apple understands that each person using this command may have different needs and has provided a number of different options to let users decide what is needed in their situation. These options include:

• -d — Prevent the display from sleeping.
• -i — Prevent the system from idle sleeping.
• -s — Prevent the system from sleeping. This is valid only when system is running on AC power.
• -u — Declare that a user is active. If the display is off, this option turns the display on and prevents the display from going into idle sleep.
• -t — Specifies the timeout value in seconds for which the command is valid.

To learn more about caffeinate and other ways to use the command, visit the Mac Developer Library entry on caffeinate.

Alternatives to the Command Line

Older versions of OS X, unfortunately, do not have the ability to use this command, and the convenience of an application can be difficult to beat. Luckily, developers have listened and provided a number of convenient and compatible options. Each of these includes different features, ranging from simple time settings to more advanced facical detection via the iSight camera, so I encourage you to look through them to find what best fits your needs. These include, but aren’t limited to:

• Caffeine on the Mac App Store by Lighthead Software — Free
• InsomniaX by semaja2 — Free
• Should I Sleep on the Mac App Store by Marcelo Leite — $1.99
• SleepLess by ALXsoft — $9.50
• SmartSleep by Jinx — $3.99

Conclusion

In this Quick Tip we briefly covered some reasons you may want to prevent your Mac from sleeping, how to use the caffeinate command, and lastly I shared some applications that available to users who may prefer the convenience of an application or may not have Mountain Lion installed on their machine. I hope you’ve enjoyed this quick tip, if you have any questions please let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them!

As shown previously, despite being – to all intents and purposes – sealed boxes, it is possible to upgrade these devices in order to further their useful lifespan. With a Core 2 Duo processor, upgrading the 80 or 120GB hard drive to, perhaps, a 500GB HDD brings the machine up to a more modern specification capable of housing large iTunes and iPhoto libraries.

In this tutorial, I’ll be showing you how to upgrade the hard disc drive (HDD) in your Mac mini. For the purposes of the tutorial, I’ll be using a Mac mini Core 2 Duo machine, model A1283.

Preparation

It is important that you prepare your workspace. If you have lots of clutter, it’ll be easier to lose things. Ensure that you have a clean, level and spacious work surface in order to conduct the upgrade.

Having good lighting, either natural or with a good desk lamp, is important, too. A small torch may also help.

What You’ll Need

Before you start, assemble the required items on your clear work area.

• A Mac mini (I’m using an A1283 model)
• A 2.5" SATA hard drive (of larger capacity than the one in your mac mini. I suggest 500GB or 1TB)
• A 2.5" SATA hard drive caddy
• A cloth
• A Phillips no.00 screwdriver
• A 2-inch putty knife
• A spudger

It is recommended that you grind down the edge of the putty knife so that you create a bevelled edge. This makes it easier to pry the case apart without causing damage to the case itself.

Save Time: Clone Your HDD Before Upgrading

Before dismantling your Mac mini, I recommend investing a little time in cloning your existing, internal HDD to your new, larger capacity HDD.

By doing this, it means that you will be able to boot your Mac mini – with the new, larger capacity HDD – and be up and running immediately following the hardware upgrade.

To do this, you will need either Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! and a 2.5" SATA HDD Caddy. See our tutorial on using Carbon Copy Cloner.

How To Upgrade The Hard Drive

In order to upgrade the hard drive, of the Mac mini, I am going to remove the lid of the machine and then remove the internal frame (holding various components including the SuperDrive) so that I can gain access to the hard drive.

Step 1

Ensure that your Mac mini is unplugged and has cooled down if you have been using it recently.

Lay out your cloth on your work area, for protection, and place the Mac mini upside down on the cloth so that the grey, rubberised base is uppermost.

Step 2

Locate the (very small) gap between the aluminium outer casing and the white plastic of the base (adjacent to the vents around the edge)

Carefully insert the putty knife into the gap and push down until about 10mm of the blade is inserted and will go no further.

Gently pry the base, of the Mac mini, up and away from the top housing. You may need to repeat the prying motion in order to release the catches on the base that retain the top.

Step 3

Repeat the same prying motion on the opposite side of the machine until the top housing is partly separated from the base.

Step 4

Invert the Mac mini such that the top of the machine is now uppermost. From the rear of the machine, where the connection ports are located, carefully pull the base and the top apart from each other using your fingers.

Step 5

Set the top of the Mac mini aside in a safe place and place the naked Mac mini on your work area, the correct way up, so that you can see the top of the superdrive.

Step 6

Orientate the machine so that the rear of the Mac mini (with the connection ports) is facing towards you. You will be able to see three antennas for Bluetooth and AirPort wireless functionality. There will be one (AirPort) on the left and two (Bluetooth) on the right.

Step 7

Tip: Exercise caution in removing these antennas from their mountings as carelessness will lead to broken components. If you exercise care then you will have no issues.

Starting with the AirPort antenna, on the left of the Mac mini, carefully squeeze the two outer retaining arms so that the antenna can be lifted from it’s post. Be careful as squeezing too hard will break the retaining arms. You want to be using just enough pressure so that the antenna can be released.

Tip: Bear in mind that when you come to replace the antenna, the two retaining arms will need to be gently squeezed towards each other in order to mount it properly.

Step 8

Moving to the right hand side of the Mac mini, the two Bluetooth antenna boards will just lift from the internal frame. To remove the boards, just pull them vertically, and carefully, away from the frame.

Tip: Be careful, there may be some resistance before the boards suddenly release. You need to gently pry them away without yanking them.

The antenna located towards the front of the Mac mini may have a wire secured with a small piece of black tape. Use a spudger to release the wire.

Tip: Don’t lose the springs underneath each antenna. You would be wise, at this point, to remove them and set them aside in a safe place.

Step 9

Between the rear of the SuperDrive and the rear of the Mac mini, locate a brown ribbon cable the terminates in a beige, plastic connector. Use the flat end of a spudger to pry this ribbon cable away from the circuit board.

Step 10

Looking down on the Mac mini, locate the for Phillips screws that secure the black internal frame to the base. The screw that is in the lower right corner (assuming the rear of the Mac mini, with the connection ports, is facing from you as you look at the machine) is recessed deeper into the frame. It is also a longer screw than the others.

Tip: You might find it useful to use a torch, for this part of the process, to help in locating the screws.

Unscrew the four screws and set aside in a safe place.

Step 11

Pick up the Mac mini so you can hold the base in one hand that the internal frame in the other and, starting at the rear edge, lift the internal frame away.

You need to lift this carefully whilst paying attention to the motherboard connector which will disconnect. As soon as this has disconnected, you can separate the two parts whilst being mindful of the dangling AirPort and Bluetooth antennas.

Step 12

Place the base of the Mac mini aside in a safe place and take hold of the black internal frame that contains the hard drive.

Some guides will recommend that you take the tip of a spudger and very gently pry the hard drive thermal sensor cable away from the interconnect board. I recommend that you do not do this. This component is extremely fragile and the plastic around the end of the cable is prone to break very easily. I speak from experience. Get it wrong and your Mac mini will run the fans at maximum speed. It’s quite loud!

Instead, use a spudger to disconnect the thermal sensor from the hard drive (it’s just held on with adhesive and can be pried off). Use the spudger to release the black tape that keeps the cable secured to the hard drive.

Carefully relocate the thermal sensor cable out of the way of the hard drive. By doing this, you are not having to disconnect the very fragile connector that connects the thermal sensor to the interconnect board.

Step 13

Remove the two (larger) Phillips screws that secure the internal hard drive to the underside of the internal frame.

Set the screws aside in a safe place.

Step 14

Remove the two (larger) Phillips screws that secure the side of the hard drive to the internal frame.

Set the screws aside in a safe place.

Step 15

Carefully slide the hard drive away from the connector and towards the end of the frame that houses the fan. This will disconnect the hard drive from the interconnect board.

Lift the hard drive, from the edge opposite the fan, and remove it from the internal frame.

Step 16

Transfer the two, small silver pads from the old hard drive to the same locations on the new hard drive. They are secured with adhesive, so carefully peel them off before pressing them into place, firmly, on the new hard drive. (You will see these pads at the top and bottom, left hand side corners of the old hard drive, pictured below.)

Insert your new hard drive and follow the instructions, in reverse, to reassemble your Mac mini, ensuring that no screws or other components are left over.

Check Your Working

Reboot your Mac mini and, if you followed the instructions in the tutorial, you should boot into OS X exactly as you did on your old, smaller capacity hard disc. The only difference will be that you have more hard drive space than was available before the upgrade.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, I showed you how to successfully upgrade your Mac mini to a hard drive of a larger capacity to increase the viable lifespan of your Mac mini. I also showed how to clone your hard drive so that you could be up and running immediately after performing the surgery on your Mac mini.

If you are really smart, you will have followed the instructions in the previous tutorial, How to Upgrade the Memory in Your Mac mini, and will have upgraded the memory and the hard drive at the same time. If you did, you get bonus points!

1. Turn on Find My Mac

Open System Preferences, and select iCloud within the Internet & Wireless row. You must log into iCloud with your Apple ID to access the iCloud settings, including Find My Mac. If you’ve never used iCloud before and don’t have an Apple ID, create one from the login window.

Once logged in, scroll to the bottom of the list of iCloud features to locate Find My Mac. Ensure the checkbox next to Find My Mac is selected. Once selected, System Preferences will ask you to confirm that you’re okay with iCloud tracking the location of your Mac. If your Mac goes missing, iCloud will try to pinpoint its location, so to make use of Find My Mac, you’ll need to allow location tracking.

Find My Mac is now good to go, and you can close System Preferences. There’s nothing else for you to do until your Mac goes missing, but I’ll walk you through what happens if your Mac is misplaced or stolen.

2. Examine Your Tracking Options

To locate a lost Mac, you’ll need to log in to iCloud. You’ve just lost your Mac, how are you supposed to log in to iCloud? There are a couple of ways to track your Mac with iCloud if you don’t have access to your own computer.

iCloud is accessible via any web browser at iCloud.com. Your best bet is to borrow a friend’s computer, but if that doesn’t work, you can always try publicly available computers at internet cafés or the library. Because your computer may just be under a stack of newspapers next to your bed, though, it’s a good plan is to grab a buddy with a laptop and start the search at home.

If you have another iCloud enabled device, you won’t even need the buddy, though you may want the moral support. iPhones and iPads can track other devices on the same iCloud account using Find My iPhone. It’s a free download from the App Store, and it’s how I managed to track my Mac for this tutorial.

However you choose to locate your computer, you’ll need to log into the same iCloud account as you used in Step 1 to set up iCloud on your Mac.

3. Find Your Mac

Logged into iCloud in a browser, choose Find My iPhone. (I know, guys, but it will track any device on your iCloud account.) Using the Find My iPhone app, you’re good to go.

Find My iPhone will display a map with the locations of all of your devices. Only devices that are online will appear, though, but you can see the most recent location of an offline device.

Click Devices in the upper left corner to see a list of all devices logged into your iCloud account and being tracked. A green circle next to your Mac in the device list lets you know your Mac is online right now. (Score!) A gray circle indicates your Mac is currently offline, but additional information beneath your device’s name will tell you when it was last online. This tells you how up-to-date the location information is.

Locate your device on the Map, and click the green Driving Directions icon to find out how to get to your Mac.

Tip: If you suspect your Mac has been stolen rather than just misplaced, don’t attempt to recover it on your own. Please contact local law enforcement before confronting a potential thief.

4. Make Your Mac Make a Noise

If your Mac is online and in the same building as you, your Mac can call for help. With your Mac selected in your devices, click Play Sound. The Mac will begin to chime, and it’s going to be a pretty annoying sound. If your Mac is in earshot, you’ll know about it.

Not only will your Mac sound a chime, but it will also display an alert, and you’ll receive a notification to the email address associated with your iCloud account. Unfortunately, your Mac won’t make a sound when it’s offline, but if you do click Play Sound, your Mac will begin chiming the next time it gets back online.

This will, again, be most useful when Find My iPhone confirms your Mac is in the same building as you and it’s online. If your Mac is at a familiar location, like your workplace or a coffee shop where everyone knows your name, you can tag in a pal to search for your chiming Mac and give you a call when he finds it. This probably isn’t best to use if you’ve narrowed down your Mac’s location on the Find My iPhone map to an unfamiliar place. If you suspect your Mac has been stolen, you may not want to tip off the thieves that the jig is up until we’ve put some security measures into place.

5. Lock Your Mac

Let’s say you’ve tracked your Mac with Find My iPhone, and you have no idea where it is or how it got there, but it’s still nearby. You don’t recognize its location, but it’s still in the same city. It’s a safe bet that someone picked it up, and it’s looking like your Mac has been stolen. There’s still a good chance that if you get law enforcement involved, you can get it back, though. You just don’t want the thief browsing all of your personal files.

With your Mac selected from the list of devices in Find My iPhone, click the Lock icon. You’ll be prompted to create a six-digit passcode. Make it good, because the entire point is to keep sticky fingers away from your data, but ensure it’s something you’ll remember when your Mac is recovered and returned to you.

Find My iPhone will ask you to enter a message to display with the lock screen. Something like, “Please call (555) 555-5555 to return this computer,” should do the trick, but if you want to be cagey, a simple notice that the Mac is locked will work.

Tip: A locked Mac cannot be remotely erased, so only lock your Mac if you’re confident you can recover it.

The lock command will go through the next time the Mac goes online. The Mac will restart on its own, and the new lock screen will appear. If you added a message, that will display, as well.

6. Erase Your Mac

This is the last ditch effort and really hurts my heart to even talk about. If you think your Mac is gone for good, it may be best to cut all ties and wipe your hard disk. This will be your best bet if you’ve tracked your Mac to a far flung locale and don’t think you’ll ever see it again. You may skip ahead to erasing your hard disk as soon as your Mac goes missing if it’s got a lot of sensitive information and you have a recent backup.

To wipe your Mac, select your Mac from the list of devices in Find My iPhone and click Erase Mac. Your Mac will erase and lock itself when it is next online; if it’s online when the erase command is sent, it should start within a few seconds.

Tip: The possibility that a thief could lay hands on your Mac or that you could misplace it yourself reminds us all that we should be making frequent backups. Check out our tutorial on backing up your Mac.

Find My iPhone will prompt you to create a four-digit passcode to unlock your Mac should you regain access to your computer in the future. While this won’t restore your deleted data, it will allow you to begin reinstalling OS X. You can then restore from Time Machine, if you’ve been keeping backups.

Because Find My iPhone is so powerful, especially with Find My Mac enabled in System Preferences, always ensure that you have a complicated and difficult to guess iCloud password that is dissimilar to all of your other passwords. If a hacker were to gain access to your iCloud password, he would have the ability to track your Mac or even lock or wipe your hard disk. A strong password and Apple two-step verification are the best ways to protect your Apple ID and password.

Conclusion

Hopefully you’ll never have to use the tools available in Find My Mac and Find My iPhone. A lost computer can be devastating, not just because of the monetary value, as it can be hard to calculate the value of the loss of your data. If your Mac is stolen, the thief has a potential window into your passwords, credit card numbers, email, and much more.

We looked at several ways to recover and protect your Mac should it ever go missing. Using the Find My iPhone web application and iOS app, we tracked a lost Mac, caused it to play a sound, locked a potentially stolen Mac, and even learned how to wipe the hard disk of an irretrievable Mac.

Have you ever used Find My Mac/iPhone to locate a lost or stolen device? Let us know how it worked for you!

There are a few ways to save money on your next Mac:

1. Selling Your Current Mac
2. Trading Your Current Mac
3. Buying Your Next Mac Used or Refurbished.

I'll cover each of these to help identify the risks, rewards, and best practices so you can weigh your options.

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1. Selling Your Current Mac

Selling a computer can be a burden. Since most current-generation Apple computers are valued at over a thousand dollars, the thought of selling something so valuable usually brings on a feeling of uneasiness. It doesn’t have to be a painful experience, though, as long as you know the venues and their idiosyncrasies.

Craigslist

Listing your Mac in the free classifieds of Craigslist seems like a brilliant first act, but it opens you to a few inevitabilities. You could receive many low-ball offers from people looking for a steal, or you may have your computer pawed over by an overly meticulous weirdo. Or, worse yet, you could be given counterfeit money or a bad check.

On the other hand, it could go swimmingly: you meet at Starbucks, the buyer briefly checks the features of the computer and you get cold, hard cash with minimal trouble and no commissions. Craigslist is usually great; creating an ad is quick, easy, and free, but it also brings out some oddballs so be careful out there.

Bottomline: Meet in a public place, use discretion, and don’t accept a check.




eBay

Starting as a kitschy online bazaar, eBay has morphed into a buying and selling monolith. Along the way, eBay made the wise decision of purchasing PayPal, thereby solidifying a secure, respectable online payment method and ensuring users at least a little piece of mind when transferring funds to complete strangers. For that security, eBay charges a hefty commission on sales that boils down to ten percent for using eBay, and 2.9% for using PayPal as the payment method. The protections offered require that you only ship to PayPal confirmed addresses, and that you provide tracking information with signature confirmation so the buyer can’t claim the item was stolen from his/her porch.

Creating a sale listing on eBay is easy because its wizard with predefined item specifics for most Apple computers so a lot of the work is taken care of for you, with the exception of snapping and uploading pictures. Furthermore, since eBay has a good reputation, it attracts many potential buyers.


Tip: Use a lot of close-up pictures when selling on eBay. Uploading up to 12 images is free using the selling wizard.

Bottomline:The buyer and seller protection and high traffic of eBay aren’t free. Be prepared to pay a 13 percent commission for using the most trusted online marketplace.




Amazon Marketplace

Like eBay, Amazon.com gets a large volume of shopping traffic, but many don’t know that Amazon allows users to sell their used goods on the same listing pages where it sells new products. No brick-and-mortar business (or even a Web business) is necessary to sell on the Amazon Marketplace, where commission fees are often lower than eBay (six percent for the personal computers category, versus eBay’s 12.9 percent).

One caveat, is that Amazon requires sellers to offer a similar return policy so even if you say “no returns”, chances are that if a buyer escalates a return request using Amazon’s A-to-Z guarantee, Amazon will side with the buyer, even up to 90 days later. This is important because a Mac can lose value instantly if a new revision is released, meaning something you sold a few months ago could be returned at a loss.




Listing with Amazon is as easy as finding the Mac you wish to sell in the product catalog and then clicking the “Sell on Amazon” button on the right side under the used listings. Most Amazon listings don’t have pictures so be sure to describe everything accurately. Amazon does allow you to charge a restocking fee, within reason (ten to 15 percent), for returns, but if a claim is filed by the buyer, they may not allow you to charge the fee.

Bottomline:Amazon Marketplace is near eBay in terms of trustworthiness, but its dedication to the customer could end up costing you, if your Mac is returned.

Wherever you choose to sell your Mac, remember to be careful and read all terms and requirements that protect you as the seller. It’s important to arm yourself with knowledge of the terms should an issue arise.


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2. Trading Your Current Mac

Save yourself from the worries of selling your computer by simply trading it in. You’ll be trading some of computer’s value for the piece of mind of dealing with reputable gadget resellers like Gazelle, Amazon, or Best Buy, but there’s much less chance of the unexpected. The typical process is outlined below:

1. Accept a price quote from a trade-in site based on the condition and specifications of your computer.
2. Wipe your hard drive and reinstall OS X from scratch
3. Box up your computer safely with plenty of foam packing material and a copy of the quoted price.
4. Affix prepaid shipping label from trade-in service to the box and drop it off at the appropriate service
5. Await your check.

Tip: Shop around for the best trade-in values. Just because one site has the best price today doesn’t mean it will tomorrow or a week from now.

In a quick run-through of the sites listed above, I found GoRoostr.com gave me the highest quote for my current Mac, followed by Gazelle, and then Amazon.


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3. Buying Your Next Mac Used or Refurbished

Buying an Apple product used is actually a fairly painless process assuming you know what you are buying and buy within a protective area like eBay, Amazon, or another Web reseller. Since the one year of Applecare warranty that comes with new Macs is completely transferrable to a new buyer, there is a sort of double protection for the buyer should any trouble with the computer happen a month or two after purchase. There are still some things to be conscious of, though.

Know What You’re Buying

Apple updates its computer line-up quite regularly, often just improving internal parts and not the chassis. If you’re looking to buy the current model or last year’s model, the information may still be on Apple.com but past a certain point, Apple takes that information down. Thankfully, Wikipedia is there to database the history of Apple hardware over the last decade. Also, don’t be afraid to ask a seller for the serial number; there are a few utilities on the web that will provide you with system details based on that number.

Tip: Finding small differences in certain Macbook models can be difficult, but the 30 extra minutes you spend making sure you know what you’re buying will save you more time if you have to return a purchase.

Buy From a Trusted Seller

I’ve detailed some of the protections that online markets use to make sure buyers don’t get swindled, but buying from a reputable merchant always helps ensure that you won’t be squeezed. For resellers, I recommend WarehouseDeals.com, a subsidiary of Amazon that sells customer returns at a discount. They carry the same return policy as Amazon and even ship via Amazon Prime (if you’re a member). Amazon marketplace and eBay can also be good places to buy. At either, you’ll want to look for a seller with a high feedback rating. In addition to high feedback, check the seller’s sales history to make sure they’ve sold something recently. Occasionally




Tip: While you can buy locally on Craigslist, some find it too risky when purchasing a pricey gadget. You’ll have minimal buyer protection after the sale, short of filing a police report, and it’s hard to identify water damage or test every feature of a computer in ten minutes at a McDonalds.

Buy Refurbished From Apple

If all the friendly warnings have you rethinking your idea of buying a used Mac, then there is a safer option: buy refurbished directly from Apple. Refurbished Macs from Apple come with a full year of AppleCare and Apple often replaces the outer casings on the refurbished models so it’s practically like getting a new one.




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Conclusion

Wheeling and dealing is not for everyone, but if you understand your options, you can easily save some money on your next Mac upgrade. Just be informed on the selling terms for whatever site you use, and you’ll be well on your way to getting a new Mac for only a couple hundred dollars difference after selling your old one. That means more money in your pocket for the important things.

]]> http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/hardware/how-to-save-money-on-your-next-mac/feed/ 5 http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/customization/how-to-configure-a-mac-to-make-remote-support-a-breeze/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-to-configure-a-mac-to-make-remote-support-a-breeze http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/customization/how-to-configure-a-mac-to-make-remote-support-a-breeze/#comments Thu, 13 Jun 2013 12:00:39 +0000 Jordan Merrick http://mac.tutsplus.com/?p=49922 More and more of our friends and family are getting a Mac, whether it’s as their first home computer or they’ve switched from a Windows PC. This means that, as Mac aficionados, we’re usually the first one our parents call when something isn’t working right. In this guide, I’ll show you how to set up their Mac in such a way that any remote assistance needed can be done quickly and easily.

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First Question: Why?

If you’ve ever worked in IT support, even for an hour, your friends and family make the assumption that not only can you fix any of their problems but that you’d be happy to, as well! It’s inevitable, I’m afraid and after working as a Genius for a number of years, I somehow also became the IT support person for the whole family.

But let’s face it, you can’t really say no to fixing your parent’s computer queries, can you? Instead, let’s make our lives easier by preparing a family member’s Mac with some useful tools and settings so that if anything does happen, you’re in a much better to fix it, and fix it quickly!

Tip: Before we continue, this guide will assume that you have physical access to the Mac. In addition, always make sure to ask the owner’s permission before making any changes. Once you explain why you’d like to make any of the following changes, they’ll likely be more than happy to let you continue!

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The Plan

I’m going to use an example Mac that we’ll assume is my parents’. They’re not very computer savvy and only really use it for internet access, email, word processing and organising photos. Provided the Mac isn’t experiencing some kind of hardware fault, we’re going to want a way to see what they’re seeing with some form of remote access (so we can see the problem ourselves and fix it), run updates and installs without needing them to be sat at the computer to enter their password and also give them some additional support information for the times that you’re either not available.

With the above in mind, here’s our plan for our parents’ Mac:

• A second administrator account for us to use
• Remote access in the form of screen sharing (in this case we’ll be using TeamViewer)
• Configuring software updates to download automatically
• Make sure there’s a good backup plan
• Providing AppleCare contact information and the location of the nearest Apple Store

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1. Second Administrator Account

Setting up a second administrator account means that we will always have administrator access and allows us to run updates and installations without needing your parent’s password. Additionally, if they’re experiencing problems with their user account (for example, they can’t log in), you’re still in a position to potentially fix the issue as there’ll be a second, working account that is not frequently used.

Step 1




Open System Preferences and then select Users & Groups

Step 2

You’ll likely need to unlock the preference pane to make changes, so click the padlock icon in the lower-left corner and enter the current user’s password. This will be the last time we need to have your parent’s enter their password as, going forward, everything we do will use our new administrator account.

Step 3

Click the + icon in the lower-left of the pane to add a new account. Change the New Account drop down option to Administrator.




At this stage, I would enter the name Administrator. You can enter whatever you wish, provided it isn’t already in use. If you like, you can override the Account Name to just “admin”, making it a little easier to enter when using the login details.

Set a very secure password! Don’t use a generic password like “password” or “admin”.

Tip: Under Password Hint, I usually include a little message that says “For support only, do not use”.

Step 4

Once you’ve completed the new account pane, click Create User. If your parents have automatic login enabled, you may be given a message asking if you’d like to disable automatic login. Keep it enabled for now but make sure to have a discussion with your parents about switching it off as it’s a big security risk and is one feature I highly recommend everyone doesn’t use.

We’ve now created our own administrator account that we can use. What this means is that at any point are we prompted to enter the user’s password (for example, installing a piece of software), we can simply enter our administrator username and password instead.

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2. Remote Access

The remote access we’ll set up will be one that is very easy to use and doesn’t involve any network settings to change, as well as being completely free to use. We’re going to accomplish this by using one of my favourite apps, TeamViewer.

TeamViewer is a multi-purpose remote access tool. We can use it to screen share, send files, video chat, share presentations and more. However, we don’t need all of that – all we’re interested in is the screen sharing.

Unlike many other apps, TeamViewer is designed to be as simple as possible for the end-user (in this case, our parents). Instead of registering or creating logins, when the TeamViewer app is launched it displays a nine digit ID code and a randomly generated four digit passcode. All we need is our parent’s to tell us these two codes and we can then access the Mac directly and use their screen. The nine digit ID stays the same but the passcode is randomly generated every time for security, making this very useful.

Best of all, it’s completely free for non-commercial use.

Step 1

First, visit TeamViewer’s download page.

On your Mac, download the full version of TeamViewer. This allows us to connect remotely to our parent’s Mac as well as starting remote sessions if needed.

Step 2




Once downloaded, install the app by running the installer within the downloaded file. This will place TeamViewer in your Applications folder.

Step 3




Go to your Applications folder and launch TeamViewer. Upon its first launch, you’ll be prompted to set up a permanent remote access password. This is for accessing this Mac. For the purposes of this guide, you can simply select skip as we won’t be sharing your Mac’s screen.

Step 4

On our parent’s Mac, you’ll want to download the TeamViewer QuickSupport app, listed under Additional Downloads. The reason we’re using this is version rather than the full one is simply that there’s no other options in this version, it’s only purpose is to allow a remote connection which makes it very easy to use.

Step 5




Once TeamViewer QuickSupport has downloaded, open the DMG file where you’ll then see the app. Unlike the version we downloaded on our Mac, this requires no installation to be run. Instead, simply drag the app to the Applications folder.

Step 6 (Testing)




Now to test TeamViewer! Let’s launch the TeamViewer QuickSupport app on our parent’s Mac which will display our 9 digit ID and randomly generated passcode.




Launch TeamViewer on your Mac and enter the 9 digit ID we’ve got, then click Connect. At that point, the app will prompt you for the passcode. Enter the code and continue then at that point you should now be screen sharing our parent’s Mac! Whenever our parents have some problems or need some support, we can just ask them to launch TeamViewer QuickSupport from the Applications folder and provide the details we need, allowing us to instantly connect. We’re effectively now at the Mac and can do almost everything we’d need to.

Tip: Remember that if you do need to restart the Mac (for example, after a software update) then we’ll need the TeamViewer details again.

Why Remote Access?

There are two very good reasons why setting up a form of remote access is useful. The first is that we can’t often rely upon what someone tells us over the phone as being accurate. That doesn’t mean the person isn’t being truthful, it means that what the user sees may not necessarily help us identify the issue.

Your dad calls you one evening and tells you that he thinks he’s lost all of his photos. He can open iPhoto but it says it cannot find the iPhoto library. You ask him to check the trash but there’s nothing there. After a while, you decide to go and visit your parents to take a further look, assuming the Mac needs some software reinstalling or data recovery.

When you get there, you see an iPhoto library where it should be, in the Photos folder. However, it’s name has changed to some garbled characters. What has likely happened is the file was accidentally renamed when something was placed on the keyboard.

Whilst the example above is atypical, it does happen. If we had remote access and could see your dad’s screen, it would have saved you a trip.

The second reason is also related to the example above. It’s very hard to give detailed instructions to someone over the phone who isn’t computer savvy, especially when those instructions might involve using Disk Utility or, heaven forbid, Terminal. There’s no guarantees those instructions would be followed correctly and you don’t want something to go wrong or else it’ll be your head on the block!

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3. Software Updates

It’s always a good idea to make sure the Mac can do as much of the work as possible when it comes to preventing problems. A very common fix for many novice Mac users is to install any updates that are needed. This should always be one of the first checks when troubleshooting a software related problem!

Whilst we can’t manage all app updates and Mac App Store purchases cannot be auto-updated (in versions of OS X up to 10.8 Mountain Lion), we can still make sure OS X is updating frequently.

Step 1

Open System Preferences and select Software Update.

Step 2




We want to make sure that OS X is automatically checking for updates as well as automatically downloading them in the background. Additionally, let’s make sure that system files and security updates are installed automatically as well.

In Mountain Lion, this just means making sure all our options here are selected.

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4. Backups

I’m a huge advocate of backups and since Apple provides a great solution in the form of Time Machine, there’s absolutely no reason why our parents shouldn’t have a backup. Provided they have a suitable external hard drive (if they don’t, get them to buy one) we can ensure their data is constantly backed up. Not only does that mean they have peace of mind but if they need to restore anything, they can either do it themselves or of they get stuck, we can do it using our remote access we already set up.

Step 1

Ensure you have a large capacity external hard drive. As USB drives are so cheap, it doesn’t make sense to buy anything less than 1TB. If possible, go for USB 3.0. They’re usually the same price, are backwards compatible and if our parents decide to get a new Mac in the future, the hard drive can then take advantage of the newer USB technology.

Step 2

Plug in the new hard drive. Time Machine will more than likely prompt if we’d like to use this drive for backup purposes. If it does, then confirm you would like to.




If it doesn’t we can also open System Preferences and select Time Machine. Click Select Disk and choose the new drive we’ve just connected. Simple!

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5. Further Support With Apple

Sometimes, no matter how hard we try, there’s going to be a problem that we just can’t fix. Whether it’s a software problem that has us stumped or the Mac appears to be experiencing a fault, at that point it’s up to the guys at Apple to work their magic and get the Mac up and running.

Mac owners have two primary methods of getting support from Apple. The first option is calling AppleCare support. AppleCare has call centres all over the world and is available in many languages and countries. With the AppleCare Protection Plan (APP), you can call them as often as you like with the only cost being that of the phone call. However, they’re always worth calling even without APP as they’ll likely try some basic troubleshooting before continuing.




The second option is to visit the Genius Bar at their nearest Apple Store. The Genius Bar operates on an appointment-based system, but it’s completely free to use. All appointments are free and they’ll do what they can in those 15–20 minutes to help you. If the Mac is out of warranty, they’ll detail any costs involved if you need to have it serviced. If it’s in warranty, they’ll be able to facilitate the repair without charge.

So, to make sure our parents have everything they need, we’re going to create a contact in Contacts. In it, we’ll place the AppleCare phone number, address of the nearest Apple Store and the web address for the store’s page. That way, if our parents need support from Apple, they have everything in one place.

Step 1

Let’s find our local AppleCare telephone number. Apple has a great support article for searching for any worldwide AppleCare phone number, detailing any local charges they might involve.

As I’m located in the UK, I’ll be using the telephone number 0844 209 0611.

Step 2

Now to find the closest Apple Store. This may or may not be worthwhile, depending on where our parents live. Some countries might not even have an Apple Store so if you don’t have a store close by, you can skip this section. AppleCare will always be able to provide you the location of the closes Apple Authorised Service Centre, who can do the same work as the Apple Store.

You can find the full list of Apple Stores at Apple Retail.

Thankfully, an Apple Store is located nearby for our parents, in my case it is the Apple Store Trafford Centre. As you can see in the store’s page, we’ve got the address, phone number and opening hours information. More importantly, on the top-right of the page is a blue Make Reservation button to make a Genius Bar appointment.

Tip: Instead of using the AppleCare telephone number, if you have an Apple Store that is local you can use their telephone number instead. The main switchboard includes an option to speak to AppleCare but it’ll save you the cost of the phone call.

Step 3

Open Contacts from the Applications folder, then click the + button to add a new contact.

Add the name “AppleCare” as the company name, leaving the first and last name fields empty and tick the box marked “Company”. Enter the AppleCare telephone number as the main number.

Step 4




Add the Apple Store’s address to the contact and also the web address of the store’s page where it says home page.

Click Done. Now we have a complete contact card that contains all the useful contact information for Apple Support.

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Wrapping Up

Whilst there may appear to be a lot of work involved in setting up our parent’s Mac for support, it’s actually all very straightforward. Furthermore, it makes helping them so much easier in the future when you put in this little bit of work. The only drawback is that it might work so well, they’ll come to rely on you and, worse still, tell all their friends and family about you!

Ultimately, the steps we’ve taken above ensure that a family member who is new to the Mac can be happy knowing that if something does go wrong, you’re more than prepared to deal with any problems the Mac might have.

]]> http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/customization/how-to-configure-a-mac-to-make-remote-support-a-breeze/feed/ 4 http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/os-x/quick-tip-removing-duplicates-in-open-with-using-terminal/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=quick-tip-removing-duplicates-in-open-with-using-terminal http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/os-x/quick-tip-removing-duplicates-in-open-with-using-terminal/#comments Wed, 12 Jun 2013 12:00:44 +0000 Toby Seers http://mac.tutsplus.com/?p=49569 If you’re like me, you’ll notice that things start to get messy on your Mac after a while if you aren’t super organised. The desktop gets full of files, and your folders can easily get into a bad state; but what really tells me I need to sort things out is when my right click option for Open With gets crammed with all sorts of useless junk.

In this tutorial I’ll show you a very easy way to stop your Open With list showing duplicates and apps you no longer have.


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The Problem

If you tend to install and uninstall apps fairly often, like I do, you can get left with an option to Open With apps you haven’t even got on your Mac anymore, or even more frustrating, multiple entries of the same app. This problem can also arise if you use virtual machines like Parallels or WMWare that can leave behind data from uninstalled apps. Does this look familiar?



The problem here is that the Launch Services database is full of unwanted apps, and I want to rebuild it. So to do this involves using the Terminal quickly.

Note that you can use apps like Cocktail or Onyx for this, but when it can be done so simply by yourself I recommend following this method.

Step 1. Open Up Terminal



First thing you need to do is open up Terminal, which is where your Mac processes commands that you can give it. It is located in /Applications/Utilities or just do a spotlight search for it. Don’t get scared if you’ve never done this, it may look like a bunch of gibberish to you, but that’s fine. Terminal is a very powerful tool, but if you follow what I instruct you to do, step by step, you should have no trouble.

Step 2. Enter the Code



Now that you’ve got your Terminal open it’s time to enter the code. Now it’s simply a case of copying and pasting the code below into Terminal, and hitting the enter key.

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

Hopefully you have something that looks like the screenshot above. We’re done with Terminal now, so you can close the app.

Step 3. Relaunch Finder



To allow the changes made to take effect I need to relaunch Finder. Unlike normal apps you can’t simply cmd-Q Finder to quit it, but fortunately the solution isn’t much more challenging. While holding the alt key, right click on the Finder icon and select Relaunch.

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Result



What I have done in this Quick Tip is to reset the Launch Services database using just Terminal, and now when you right click on a file to open it, there should only be one version of the apps that open this kind of file. Doesn’t that look better!? There’s no longer the confusing multiple entries and you should be able to get on with doing what you wanted to do in the first place – opening files, without distraction. Hopefully now you can enjoy using a slightly cleaner Mac. Feel free to let me know in the comments if you have any similar tricks.

]]> http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/os-x/quick-tip-removing-duplicates-in-open-with-using-terminal/feed/ 5 http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/app-training/getting-started-with-keynote-on-os-x/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=getting-started-with-keynote-on-os-x http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/app-training/getting-started-with-keynote-on-os-x/#comments Tue, 11 Jun 2013 12:00:19 +0000 James Cull http://mac.tutsplus.com/?p=50903 Over the past couple of tutorials, I’ve showed you the basics of Pages and Numbers, two incredibly powerful yet highly functional components of Apple’s iWork suite. Now it’s time to move onto Keynote, Apple’s answer to Microsoft’s PowerPoint, which I feel is the most under appreciated component of iWork. Throughout my university career, I’ve used Keynote almost exclusively for all my presentations as I find it so much easier to use than PowerPoint and, in my honest opinion, the results are far better.

Remember that film, An Inconvenient Truth, where Al Gore predicted death and destruction across the whole world if we don’t change our attitudes to global warming? Yep, his presentation was done entirely on Keynote (though this may have something to do with the fact that the guy did sit on the Apple board at the time) and I feel this really demonstrates what the program is capable of (although he did enlist the help of a graphic design company).

Let’s delve right into Keynote and see what it’s capable of.

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Getting Started

Just like Pages and Numbers, Keynote can be purchased from the App Store for the low price of $19.99 or you can choose to get it pre-installed along with your brand shiny new Mac. And, just like Pages and Numbers, it also supports iCloud so you can view your spreadsheets across all of your devices.



Although Keynote doesn’t come with any pre-packaged presentations complete with content, it does come with lots of professionally-designed templates which will hopefully suit your audience. Before selecting one, make sure you choose the correct slide size in the bottom-right hand corner (in most cases, 1024 x 768 will suffice). For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to select the White template.



 

Keynote will then create a new blank presentation for you to work with. Before we starting adding some awesome stuff, let’s familiarise ourselves with the interface first.

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The Interface

If you’ve used presentation software before (like PowerPoint) then Keynote shouldn’t present too many difficulties as it’s extremely easy to navigate around.



 

Running down the left-hand side of the screen are the individual slides that make up your presentation. As you can see in the screenshot above, there’s only one slide at the moment, because it’s a new presentation, but as you add more then they will appear here.

Adding a new slide is simple. Just click on the New button (the one with the + sign) above this window and Keynote will create a new, blank slide for you. To change its layout, click on the Masters button (the sixth one along from the left) and select a new one from there. Slides can of course be reordered easily — just click on the slide thumbnail on the left-hand side of the screen and drag it to where you want it to be.



 

If you’re unhappy with your current theme (which you selected at the start) then you can pick a new one by clicking on the Themes button (the fifth one along from the left). Bear in mind, though, that if you’re entered loads of text and images on your slides that it may mess with the formatting, so it’s best to choose this at the beginning before you start building your presentation!



Working with content is very straightforward — just double-click on the text-box you’d like to edit and type away. If you don’t like the default font that’s bundled in with the template, then you can change it easily using the formatting toolbar, which is pretty much the same as the one in Pages and Numbers, albeit with a few extra options (auto-shrink, for example, which sizes your text down automatically).

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Adding Media

You’ll most likely be working with media in Keynote to bring some colour and extra oomph to your presentations. Just like in Pages, Keynote integrates with your Aperture and iPhoto libraries so you can add photos directly from these straight into your presentation. Images can be added to any slide, however all themes come with image templates built-in, making it easy to add pictures. Simply click on the desired picture in your library and drag it over the existing one — Keynote will automatically replace it with your image.



 

Just like in Pages, Keynote allows you to crop your image right down to size from within the application. Just click on Edit Mask and use the sliders to resize your image. When you’re happy, click on Edit Mask again and your picture should be resized. You can also revert the image back to its default size by clicking on the Unmask button in the toolbar.

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Working With Animations

I’ve sat through many a presentation, whether at work or at university and I can tell you for a fact that animations often make presentations a little more bearable as it gives the audience something to focus on more than just the words on the screen. Of course, it’s important not to overload your presentation with cheesy animations (and especially not sound effects!) but luckily, Keynote includes some really professional ones that will give your slideshow a new, dynamic edge. To show you how animations work, I’m going to use an example.



Let’s say that I want to animate the slide above — firstly, the title, Layout, then each point individually. Firstly, click on the item that you want to animate (this doesn’t necessarily have to be a text box — it can also be an image, chart or table) then click on the Inspector button in the top-right hand corner of Keynote and select the Build option (the third one along from the left).



A little dialogue box will pop up, as you can see in the screenshot above. Here you can select either a Build In or Build Out animation. Build-in animations are great for introducing titles or individual bullet points and help reinforce what you are trying to say. Simply click on the desired animation from the drop-down Effect list and Keynote will automatically apply to the object you’ve selected — you’ll also see a little animation as well.

Some animations allow you to modify their settings (such as whether the animation is done by letter or by word, the direction and the duration). Feel free to play around with these until you’ve found the style you’re happy with.



 

For bullet points, the animation is slightly different. You can either choose to have your bullet points appear all at once or by bullet. Click on the drop down Delivery menu and select which option you’d like. You can also choose the order in which each bullet is “built” — the standard setting here is First to Last.

By now you should have two animations on your slide — one for the title and another for each bullet point. If you want to reorder the animations on your slide, then click on the More Options button at the bottom, where a little drawer should slide out on the left-hand side of the Inspector.



Simply click on each individual element and drag it to rearrange, much as you would do with rearranging slides that we looked at above.

You can also add transitions to slides in order to add a bit of sparkle to your presentation. Simply click on the Inspector select the Slide button (the second one along from the left). Select your transition from the drop-down Effect menu — Keynote will display a preview of the animation for you.



You can select whether the transition should start on clicking your mouse or automatically from the drop-down Start Transition box. With the automatic option, you can choose the delay (in seconds) — this is useful if you plan for your presentation to run automatically.

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Rehearsing Your Presentation

Of course, you’ll want to practice your presentation before doing it for real! To do so, click on the Play button in the top left-hand side of the screen where Keynote will run through your presentation for you, including all the animations. If you plan on running your presentation on an external screen, however, then you can use the extremely useful Rehearser view. To bring this up, simply click on Play in the menu bar then select the Rehearse Slideshow option.



This brings up the Rehearser view which shows you the current slide (i.e. what your audience is seeing), the next point to come up on the right-hand side, the current time and the time elapsed since you started your presentation. If you’ve added any notes to your slides (by clicking on View > Show Presenter Notes) then they will appear here too. Note that the Rehearser view automatically appears when you connect your Mac to an external display device (such as an external monitor or projector) and I find it really useful to keep track of everything without having endless handouts and notes in front of you!

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Exporting Your Work

Keynote allows you to export your spreadsheets in either QuickTime (as a movie), PPT, PDF, HTML or iPod format, or as individual images. To do so, just click on File then Export where you can choose your desired format. If you save it to iCloud then it’ll appear on all your iOS devices as well, where you can edit it on the move and all changes will automatically be synced when you get back. You can also revert spreadsheets back to previous versions by clicking on File then Revert To and select Browse All Versions.



As you can see from the screenshot above, you’ll be presented with a Time Machine-like view allowing you to scroll back through all versions of your presentation. Any changes you make are automatically synced, so if you’ve made a major error and don’t fancy hitting Command + Z (undo) a hundred times, then the Versions feature can save you a lot of time!

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That’s It!

Congratulations, you’ve successfully reached the end of this tutorial! Keynote is of course a really advanced application that allows you do an awful lot of stuff (and too much to cover in one tutorial) so I’ll be covering some more specific features in future tutorials. This one is simply designed to give you an overview of it and how it works – especially if you’re switching from another spreadsheet, such as LibreOffice’s Impress or Microsoft’s PowerPoint.

I hope it has been useful and if you need any help with anything then just ask me in the Comments section below — I’ll be glad to help you out!

]]> http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/app-training/getting-started-with-keynote-on-os-x/feed/ 0 http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/hardware/how-to-upgrade-the-memory-in-your-mac-mini/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-to-upgrade-the-memory-in-your-mac-mini http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/hardware/how-to-upgrade-the-memory-in-your-mac-mini/#comments Mon, 10 Jun 2013 12:00:24 +0000 Johnny Winter http://mac.tutsplus.com/?p=51011 The Mac mini is a much underrated member of of the Mac line-up of computers, in my opinion. This diminutive little box is versatile Mac that can be used either as one’s main computer or as a media centre, or even a computer that is easily portable on those occasions when you might need it elsewhere.

Despite being – to all intents and purposes – sealed boxes, it is possible to upgrade these devices in order to further their useful lifespan. With a Core 2 Duo processor, upgrading the standard 512MB or 1GB RAM module to, perhaps, 4GB or 8GB RAM brings the machine up to a spec capable of running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

In this tutorial, I’ll be showing you how to upgrade the memory (RAM) in your Mac mini. For the purposes of the tutorial, I’ll be using a Mac mini Core 2 Duo machine, model A1283.

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Preparation

It is important that you prepare your workspace. If you have lots of clutter, it’ll be easier to lose things. Ensure that you have a clean, level and spacious work surface in order to conduct the upgrade.

Having good lighting, either natural or with a good desk lamp, is important, too. A small torch may also help.

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What You’ll Need

Before you start, assemble the required items on your clear work area.

• A Mac mini (I’m using an A1283 model)
• A RAM upgrade module (I use Crucial as their service is first class)
• A cloth
• A Phillips no.00 screwdriver
• A 2-inch putty knife
• A spudger

It is recommended that you grind down the edge of the putty knife so that you create a bevelled edge. This makes it easier to pry the case apart without causing damage to the case itself.

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How To Upgrade The Memory

In order to upgrade the memory, of the Mac mini, I am going to remove the lid of the machine and then remove the internal frame (holding various components including the SuperDrive) so that I can gain access to the memory modules.

Step 1

Ensure that your Mac mini is unplugged and has cooled down if you have been using it recently.

Lay out your cloth on your work area, for protection, and place the Mac mini upside down on the cloth so that the grey, rubberised base is uppermost.




Step 2

Locate the (very small) gap between the aluminium outer casing and the white plastic of the base (adjacent to the vents around the edge)

Carefully insert the putty knife into the gap and push down until about 10mm of the blade is inserted and will go no further.

Gently pry the base, of the Mac mini, up and away from the top housing. You may need to repeat the prying motion in order to release the catches on the base that retain the top.




Step 3

Repeat the same prying motion on the opposite side of the machine until the top housing is partly separated from the base.

Step 4

Invert the Mac mini such that the top of the machine is now uppermost. From the rear of the machine, where the connection ports are located, carefully pull the base and the top apart from each other using your fingers.




Step 5

Set the top of the Mac mini aside in a safe place and place the naked Mac mini on your work area, the correct way up, so that you can see the top of the superdrive.

Step 6

Orientate the machine so that the rear of the Mac mini (with the connection ports) is facing towards you. You will be able to see three antennas for Bluetooth and AirPort wireless functionality. There will be one (AirPort) on the left and two (Bluetooth) on the right.




Step 7

Tip: Exercise caution in removing these antennas from their mountings as carelessness will lead to broken components. If you exercise care then you will have no issues. Bear in mind that when you come to replace the antenna, the two retaining arms will need to be gently squeezed towards each other in order to mount it properly.

Starting with the AirPort antenna, on the left of the Mac mini, carefully squeeze the two outer retaining arms so that the antenna can be lifted from it’s post. Be careful as squeezing too hard will break the retaining arms. You want to be using just enough pressure so that the antenna can be released.




Step 8

Tip: Be careful, there may be some resistance before the boards suddenly release. You need to gently pry them away without yanking them. Don’t lose the springs underneath each antenna. You would be wise, at this point, to remove them and set them aside in a safe place.

Moving to the right hand side of the Mac mini, the two Bluetooth antenna boards will just lift from the internal frame. To remove the boards, just pull them vertically, and carefully, away from the frame.




The antenna located towards the front of the Mac mini may have a wire secured with a small piece of black tape. Use a spudger to release the wire




Step 9

Between the rear of the SuperDrive and the rear of the Mac mini, locate a brown ribbon cable the terminates in a beige, plastic connector. Use the flat end of a spudger to pry this ribbon cable away from the circuit board.




Step 10

Looking down on the Mac mini, locate the for Phillips screws that secure the black internal frame to the base. The screw that is in the lower right corner (assuming the rear of the Mac mini, with the connection ports, is facing from you as you look at the machine) is recessed deeper into the frame. It is also a longer screw than the others.

Tip: You might find it useful to use a torch, for this part of the process, to help in locating the screws.

Unscrew the four screws and set aside in a safe place.

Step 11

Pick up the Mac mini so you can hold the base in one hand that the internal frame in the other and, starting at the rear edge, lift the internal frame away.

You need to lift this carefully whilst paying attention to the motherboard connector which will disconnect. As soon as this has disconnected, you can separate the two parts whilst being mindful of the dangling AirPort and Bluetooth antennas.




Step 12

Now that you have removed the internal frame, you will be able to access the RAM module(s). To remove a RAM module, simultaneously pull the retaining tabs away from each side of the module. Releasing these tabs will cause the RAM module to pop up whereupon it can be removed. Repeat the process for a second chip, if there is one, before inserting your upgrade RAM modules and pressing into place.




Step 13

Lucky for some, you now have to put it all back together. To reassemble your Mac mini, follow the instructions in reverse order.

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Check Your Working

Once you have reassembled your Mac mini, it is time to ensure that the upgrade has been conducted successfully.

Provided that the RAM modules are correctly seated, you will be able to boot your Mac mini into OS X, otherwise you will hear a series of beeps on start up meaning that you will need to shut down and follow the instructions once more to properly seat the memory.

Once you are logged into OS X, click on the Apple symbol on the top left of the menu bar to reveal a menu, then select About This Mac. This will reveal a window with some brief specifications about your Mac, including the amount of installed RAM.

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Conclusion

Whilst Apple recommends that you always take your Mac mini to an Apple Authorised Service Provider – and you should if you are not confident to perform this procedure – it is also true that if you are competent and confident, it is quite straight forward to upgrade the RAM if you exercise some care and patience.

Have you upgraded the memory in your Mac mini? How did you find the procedure? If you have any questions, tips or recommendations, please leave them in the comments below.

]]> http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/hardware/how-to-upgrade-the-memory-in-your-mac-mini/feed/ 2 http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/app-training/up-and-running-with-the-alfred-powerpack-workflows/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=up-and-running-with-the-alfred-powerpack-workflows http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/app-training/up-and-running-with-the-alfred-powerpack-workflows/#comments Fri, 07 Jun 2013 12:00:18 +0000 Kevin Kirsche http://mac.tutsplus.com/?p=50832 In the Up and Running With the Alfred Powerpack — The Basics tutorial, we covered a number of great PowerPack features such as Syncing, Custom Searches, Email, and 1Password. I highly recommend taking a look at that if you are new to Alfred, as below we will be focusing on Workflows and some of the more advanced aspects of this feature.

In this tutorial, I will be creating two types of workflows. One is a basic app launcher, that you might run when you get to work, while the other is a more in-depth look of how you can code your own workflow. I have intentionally omitted some features in the coding your own workflow section, to give you room to expand and practice what you’ve learned today. I encourage you to try to add more to them and share with others in the comments what you learned. The best way to learn is to share with others!

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Workflows

This is by far, my favorite new feature into Alfred as it already has saved me quite a lot of time and energy, and I’m sure it will do the same for you. Workflows allow you to extend Alfred’s abilities to do things that the developers may never have dreamed of. This includes everything from returning search results directly to Alfred to Searching Outlook for a message or calculating a color value based on a hex number and much much more.

I believe Alfred’s support page describes workflows best, “Put simply, workflows allow you to connect triggers and keywords to actions and outputs. Once they’re connected together, you’re up and running!” (http://support.alfredapp.com/workflows).

While some people will create workflows, and expand them on their own ways, many will find workflows that help them online and will never create one. More on this later though. Let’s get back to the basics of workflows though.




The Workflows Interface

The Workflows pane, though somewhat overwhelming at first, is actually rather simple. The left most vertical column includes a list of all of the currently installed Workflows that you have. Here it will tell you the name of the workflow, the workflow’s author, and will show you the icon associated with the workflow. At the bottom of this column on the left is a Share button, allowing you to easily export a workflow and share it with others.

To the right of the share button is a + and a - button. These buttons give you a quick way to add sample workflows, create a new workflow from either a template or from scratch, or delete a workflow. If you accidently click the - button though, don’t worry because Alfred will ask and confirm that you really want to delete the selected workflow.




On the right hand side you will see what a workflow does. There are a maximum of four columns, with each column corresponding to something specific. The first column, to the farthest left, is the trigger column, commonly used for hotkeys. This allows you to execute the workflow just by pressing the hotkey.

Depending on the workflow, you may be presented with the Alfred window waiting for you to type the next step, or away it will go! Other options for triggers include File Actions, Contact Actions, or Fallback Searches. We will only be referring to the hotkey’s portion of the trigger column in this tutorial. You can learn more about each by clicking on their names above.




The next column is the inputs column. This column is where we pass information into Alfred for it to use. For the Amazon suggest workflow we saw earlier, this would be whatever we are searching for and the keyword associated with it. The different types of inputs that Alfred accepts are Keywords, File Filters, and Script Filters. File filters and script filters are more advanced and will not be used in this tutorial, but they are used to do some very powerful things in Alfred! Developers, these would be features you would want to look at if you are considering creating an Alfred workflow.




The third column is where in most workflows the body of the work is done. This is the actions column. The actions column is where you can do the following:

• Open File
• Launch Apps & Files
• Default Web Search
• Open URL
• System Command
• iTunes Command
• Run Script
• Run NSAppleScript

These options, while overwhelming, means that it is possible to extend Alfred to do a multitude of different tasks. Read more by clicking on any of the above links. For the sake of our tutorial though, we will only be focusing on the Launch Apps & Files and the Open URL options.




The last column in the workflows right pane is the Outputs column. This column allows you to Post Notification, Copy to Clipboard, or Run a Script.




Updating Workflows

When Alfred 2 was first released, there was no way to update workflows. To this day, Alfred app has not included built in ways to update a workflow. But, when you give others the power to expand your software, amazing things can happen. This is exactly the case with Workflows for Alfred app. Workflows has allowed users to create workflows that allow you to update your workflows, should that feature be supported by the developer.

While not all workflows contain this feature, there is one workflow specifically which has gone above and beyond and is recognized by Alfred users and developers to be the current “standard” for updating worklfows. This is the Alleyoop workflow by Daniel Shannon. Before I explain anymore about Alleyoop, it is extremely important to note what Alfred’s creator(s) has said about this workflow:

Note from Andrew: While this is a convenient method for updating workflows, I cannot endorse the use of it unless you are fully aware of the security implications of blanket updating all of your workflows. I’m currently working on a built in workflow auto-updater, for a future Alfred 2 release, that performs the standard verification checks that Alfred currently does on manual import, along with migrating your hotkey/keyword settings on upgrading. I’ll also be adding 3rd party workflow developer signatures to keep you safe.

What this means is that while this is extremely convenient method of updating workflows, there is an inherenit danger since you are trusting the workflow developer to not have the update link go to something malicious that will be installed on your machine. With that said, and having used it personally, I have not seen or heard of any cases where developers have done that, nonetheless always proceed with caution when using software that connects to an unknown location (though if interested, you can look at the update.json file in the workflow’s folder to view from where the update is being received).

Anyway, back to Alleyoop. Alleyoop allows for developers to tell Alfred where the update will be found when there is one, what version the application is currently on, and a number of other small pieces of information. Alleyoop will then take that URL, check it and say that yes there is a file there. It will then check the versions against each other, if the remote one is a higher version number than the version you have installed on your machine, it will download that file to the Downloads folder so that you can install it manually. This allows Alfred to maintain your settings, configurations, etc.

Creating a Workflow

To be honest with you, when I first read about workflows they really confused me. All this talk about triggers, keywords, actions, outputs…What’s it all mean?! Well, I found that the best way to understand what workflows are was to create one and start playing around with them. For me, the first thing I thought about with a workflow was opening everything I need for work in the morning. At work I need Outlook, InDesign, Chrome (so I can listen to satellite radio), and more. I figured that this might be a nice and easy way to get acquainted with what workflows are, how to make a simple one, and how to use them.

What Do We Want Our Workflow to Do?

Before we dive into putting our workflow together, we need to know what we want it to do. This will make it much easier for us to create a concise workflow that does what we want and nothing more or less. For me, I want my workflow to open some applications, open a URL, and send a notification to Notification Center saying “Good Morning, Kevin!.” While the applications I list will be the ones I use on a daily basis, I want you to try to follow along with your own list! I know it may sound a bit scary, but trust me, you can do it!

First thing we want to do is create a new workflow. To do this, click on the small + button on the bottom right corner of the Workflow’s List. Click on Blank Workflow from the pop-up menu.




You will be presented with a pop-up modal asking for the Workflow Name, Description, Bundle Id, Created by, Website, and lastly an Icon. The only of these that is required is the Workflow Name. Nonetheless, let’s go through these and learn a little bit more about them.

The workflow name is what appears in the workflow list above the author name. It’s what the workflow will commonly be referred to. For our new workflow, let’s name this, “Good Morning.” Next we have a description. This appears below the title in the right hand portion of the workflows pane and explains what the workflow does and any necessary information that the user might need to know. For ours let’s just write, “Starts our morning applications, opens pandora, and wishes us a good morning.” In the box below, you will find the other three sections grouped together.

The bundle Id is used by Alfred to differentiate each workflow. For some of the popular workflows, the developers will release updates, new features, etc. The bundle Id is what allows you to download the new one, open it, and have Alfred know to ask if you would like to replace the existing workflow you have installed. For this reason, you want this number to be entirely unique and random to your application. Type in a random number here (I recommend that it be at least six digits). Next, put in your name and website and click the Create button in the bottom right.




If you have an icon that you would like to use, simply drop that in the box to the left of the Bundle Id. Alfred will use that in it’s results window.

Setting Up Our Workflow

Now that we have created our workflow, you will be presented with a rather bare window. First, let’s setup the actions we want our workflow to do. Previously we had said that we wantted our workflow to open some applications, open a URL, and send a notification to Notification Center. To do this, click on the + button in a white circle in the upper right of the workflows pane.




From the flyout menu, click Actions > Launch Apps / Files. You’ll be presented with a blank modal window. This is the list of applications / files that will be opened by the workflow. To add new items to this list, navigate to the items you would like to add in the Finder window, and drag and drop the application or file onto the open modal dialogue. To know that it will be added, you will see OS X’s standard + in a green circle next to the name and image of the application. Drag and drop each application or file in this way to add it to the list. When your list is complete, it should look something like this. The list will vary depending on what you need for your daily activities.




You can now click the Save button on the bottom right of the window. This will save the action. Next, we want to setup our URL we want to open. As it is free, we will open Pandora Internet Radio. Click on the white + button again in the upper right of the window and navigate to Actions > Open URL. You will be presented with a modal window asking you for the URL you would like to open.

While this window has the ability to do more complex things, we will simply put http://www.pandora.com/ in the URL box. Select your browser of choice from the list if you would like to use something other than your default browser. When done, your window should look like this.




Great! Click the Save button in the bottom right of the window. We now have our primary actions done. We had mentioned though that we wanted to post a notification though. Let’s add that quickly.

Click on the white + button in the upper right. Navigate to Outputs > Post Notification. In the Ouput to dropdown menu, select the service you would like the notification to appear within. This can be either Mac OS X 10.8′s Notification Center or Growl. Below that, we will leave the Only show if passed in argument has content unchecked. This is not needed for what we are doing in this tutorial. In the Title window, let’s write, “Good Morning!” In the Text box, let’s write something motivational. A great motivational phrase is, “Happiness depends upon ourselves” which was said by Aristotle. Feel free to write whatever works for you though! This is all we need to setup for what we are doing in this tutorial. With this setup, you should have a window that looks like this.




Setup Your Keyword

Great job. We now have all of our actions ready. But currently we don’t have anyway to launch them. Click on the + button in the upper right again and navigate to Inputs > Keyword. As you may have guessed. We have another window asking for some information. In the Keyword box, we want to type the keyword we will use to launch this action. For this, I will be using “goodMorning” but feel free to use whatever you would like. To the right you’ll see a checkbox and a dropdown menu. As we do not want to pass any information to Alfred, let’s uncheck the with space box and from the dropdown select No Argument. The Argument Required and Argument Optional options would allow you to require (or not) the user to give more information to Alfred. Our workflow though does not require this.

Next, we want to put the Title and the Subtext for the keyword. The Title is the top text that appears in the Alfred window after typing the keyword and the Subtext is the bottom text that appears in the Alfred window. See the image below for a nice visual of what I am referring to.




Let’s put, “Good Morning!” for the title and “Let’s have a great day” for the Subtext. You should now have a window that looks like this.




Connecting the Pieces Together

We’re just about done. You’ll notice if you try to run your new workflow, nothing will happen. We haven’t actually hooked the pieces together. When you hover your cursor over any of the squares, you will notice a tab appears on the left and/or right of the box. We use these to connect the pieces of our workflow.




Click and hold on these tabs and drag them to the purple tabs on the other items that we have created. Specifically, drag the right tab of the Keyword to the Launch Apps / Files. Then drag the right tab of the Keyword box to the Open URL action. If you run the workflow now, you will see that the workflow will open the applications and the URL, but won’t post the notification. If you look at the workflow’s panel, you’ll see that we haven’t connected the actions to our output. Let’s connect both the Launch App / Files and Open URL to the Post Notification. Voila! We now have a workflow that will launch our morning applications and open Pandora for us! Great job! Your workflows pane should look like this.




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Creating and Downloading More Advanced Workflows

While this tutorial has introduced you to the basics of workflows, it has only scratched the surface of the potential that workflows have to offer. Users have already created a large number of fantastic workflows that do things that the developers couldn’t have expected. For some of you though, this tutorial may have peaked your interest and given you a desire to create your own, more advanced workflow. Luckily, Alfred has made the resources you need readily available.

How to Find New Workflows

If you are interested in finding new workflows for Alfred, the best place to find them is the Alfred app Forum’s Share Your Workflow subforum. Here, developers have posted a number of fantastic workflows for that are ready for you to use right now! At the time of writing this, there are 20 pages worth of workflows that users have created and shared.




Some users have complained that this is not the best way to handle workflows, and a number of users have said that they are working on a solution for this that would be a centralized location to find and download all of the Workflows available for Alfred. So far, some have come and gone as they faced a number of challenges such as bandwidth, but keep an eye on the forums for this when a viable solution is found!

Use What We’ve Learned to Prevent Your Mac From Going to Sleep

So now that we have a nice basic understanding of how workflows work, the workflows interface, and setting them up. Now would be a great time to step it up a notch and use what we have learned thus far to create something that may be more useful than just a basic app launcher.

With that said, we will be taking advantage of a often overlooked command that was introduced in the OS X Mountain Lion terminal: caffeinate. For those not familiar with the caffeinate command, it allows you to prevent your computer from going to sleep. While going to sleep is often what we would like our machines to do, whether to save battery power on a laptop or to save power on a desktop, there are times when this is not the case, such as when we are watching a movie and don’t want to move the mouse every so often. This is where this workflow will come in handy, as users will be able to tell Alfred they would like to caffeinate for X minutes, where X is the duration we set.

Before we begin on this workflow, it should be known that we are essentially mimicking other workflows that exist such as Caffeinate by Shawn Rice. We are not copying the funtionality or code that he is using, as his uses more advanced programming concepts which are beyond the scope of this article.

I recommend checking out his Workflow for a more full featured workflow that can work not only with Mac 10.8 (Mountain Lion), but also with applications such as Caffeine. Nonetheless, we will be using the idea of this workflow, to use the caffeinate command, since it illustrates well how a more advanced workflow can be created.

How Does Caffeinate Work?

Caffeinate is a terminal command that creates a small (no noticable performance impact) command in the background to tell your mac that it should stay awake and not go to sleep. While this command is and can be rather powerful, we are only really going to scratch the surface of it. For those of you who may be interested in learning about the different options available to the command, a more technical description of what is occuring in the background, and the location of the process itself on your machine, visit Apple’s Mac Developer Library entry for the Caffeinate. The basic syntax that we should be familiar with though are the following two:

    # This command enables caffeinate indefinitely until you disable it by running the command again.
    caffeinate
    

    # This command enables caffeinate for one hour (3,600 seconds) and then automatically disables itself.
    #
    # The -d flag tells the operating system that we would like to prevent the display from sleeping.
    # The -s flag tells the operating system that we would like to prevent the system from sleeping (Valid only when connected via AC power).
    # The -i flag tells the operating system that we would like to prevent the system from idle sleeping.
    # The -t flag tells the operating system that we would like this command to timeout, or end, after a time we specify in seconds.
    # The & at the end tells the machine to run this process in the background.
    caffeinate -dsit 3600 &
    

Thinking Through What the Workflow Will Do

Before we begin writing any code, first thing we need to do is talk about what we want and get some of the basics setup. We want this command to take a keyword and a time argument and then enable caffeinate. Because time can be given in many different formats, such as seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks or even years, we want to ensure we are clear about how we are expecting the time to come in.

For the purpose of this workflow, I will be expecting the time to be entered into the Alfred prompt as minutes. While there are plenty of reasons you may want to use hours, or another measurement of time, I am choosing to work with minutes since this is the standard way time is given for films, which is why I would normally be using this command.




To get started with our project, create a new workflow using the + > Templates > Essentials > Keyword to Script found in the bottom right hand corner of the available workflow’s list. This will create a new workflow called, “Keyword to Script.” Let’s change that name to something a bit nicer. To do this, double click on the workflow, and you’ll be presented with a familiar modal window. Change the Workflow Name to ‘Caffeinate’ or whatever name you would like the workflow to have. For the description, I’m going to put, “Prevent the Mac from sleeping.” Now that we have those in, you can fill in the Bundle Id, Created By, Website and Icon if you wish. This is optional though, so feel free to just keep moving forward and skip right over that. With this in place, your workflow should look like this




Now that we have the workflow itself created and setup, let’s start adding the power to accomplish our task to it. First thing we should do is add the keyword we want to use. This will allow us to test our workflow if we choose to along the way, which is why I always prefer adding the keyword first. To add the keyword, double click on the Keyword box in the workflow pane and you’ll be presented with the keyword dialogue box. Here, we want to set the keyword to ‘caffeinate’ (or you can use something shorter like ‘caff’). Then for the title, we’ll put ‘Caffeinate’ and for the Subtext we’ll put ‘Prevent the mac from going to sleep’. If you wish, you would be able to also add an icon for this, I will not be doing that for this tutorial, but feel free to use an image of your preference. With these settings in place your dialogue box should look like the image below. Just hit Save and your keyword is now setup!




You will notice that we have left Argument Required selected to the right of the keyword, remember that we need to get the time for how long the user wants enable the caffeinate function. To test that this works, open the Alfred window using the hotkey that you have set and type ‘caffeinate’. If all is setup correctly, you should see the workflow appear in the list like so. If you hit enter though, nothing will happen. So let’s fix that!




Harnessing PHP to Caffeinate Our Mac

For this section, I will be using PHP to handle a lot of the work for us. This is primarily due to my personal familiarity and comfort with PHP, though this could be done using other languages as well. If you have questions, comments, or concerns, please leave a comment below and I will do my best to answer your questions.

We will also be assuming that you are paying attention to whether you have enabled or disabled the command, and will not be doing more advanced checks to ensure caffeinate has not already been enabled. For these types of features, I highly recommend using existing workflows for this due to the larger range of features they include.

Double click on the Run Script box in the workflow panel to open up a script modal window. The first thing we want to do is change the Language select box from /bin/bash to /usr/bin/php. This will allow us to write our code in PHP instead of directly in bash (the language of the terminal). We also want to leave all of the default escaping on. This prevents us from accidently using characters that will cause errors later. Only change these if you are familiar with escaping special characters manually and have a good reason to. Generally speaking, the default escaping in Alfred is very good. At this point, your modal window will look a little bland, but we’ll put in a script soon enough!




Add a notification after the script by clicking the + within the circle in the upper right of the workflow window. Then select Outputs > Post Notification.




You will then be immediately presented with a dialogue box for Alfred. I will be leaving the Output to Default, but feel free to change this if you prefer to use something different for notifications. Check the box for Only show if passed in argument has content. This will prevent us from displaying a blank notification should something go wrong. For the Title let’s put ‘Caffeinate’ and for the Text let’s put ‘{query}’. By putting ‘{query}’ we are telling Alfred that we want to rely on our script to generate the notification. All Alfred needs to do is display what the script tells it to. The modal box should now look like this:




Now, just connect the script from the right tab of the script box to the left tab of the Post Notifaction box, and voila! We are ready to start coding the script! So now that we have everything ready for the script, let’s jump right into the script. I’ll walk you through the code below.

    // This is set to off in order to escape an error for timezones not being set.
    error_reporting(0);
    //Let's take the query that the user has entered, and store it in a variable for use later.
    //Remember that the expected query is time in minutes.
    $query = "{query}";
    //Let's make sure that a number was entered. We don't want to try to do math on a word
    if (is_numeric($query)) {
        //If we are in here, the user enterred a number
        //Because caffeinate works in seconds, not minutes, let's convert the time.     Because there are 60 seconds in each minute, we multiply the query by 60.
        $timeInSeconds = ($query * 60);
        // Lets prep our command separate. You can do in the next bit, I prefer to keep them separate though.
        // The -d flag tells the operating system that we would like to prevent the display from sleeping.
        // The -s flag tells the operating system that we would like to prevent the system from sleeping (Valid only when connected via AC power).
        // The -i flag tells the operating system that we would like to prevent the system from idle sleeping.
        // The -t flag tells the operating system that we would like this command to timeout, or end, after a time we specify in seconds.
        // The > sign before /dev/null redirects the output of the program somewhere.
        // To better understand the >/dev/null 2>&1, I recommend checking out this article: http://www.xaprb.com/blog/2006/06/06/what-does-devnull-21-mean/
        // The & at the end tells the machine to run this process in the background.
        $shellCommand = 'caffeinate -dsit' . $timeInSeconds . '>/dev/null 2>&1 &';
        //Now that we have our command setup, lets execute it.
        shell_exec($shellCommand);
        if ($timeInSeconds <= 60) {
            $minuteOrMinutes = 'minute.';
        } else {
            $minuteOrMinutes = 'minutes.';
        }
        echo "Caffeinate has been enabled for $query $minuteOrMinutes";
    } else {
        //If they didn't enter a number, we want to prevent this script from continuing.
        echo "Please enter a number.";
        die("A number was not entered");
    }
    

Understanding What’s Happening in the Script

Starting at the top, we first use error_reporting(0);. This is important because it takes care of an error that PHP will call about using the system timezone. This will break the script and as such, we just are going to shut error reporting off for this. In other environments, you may want to get the system’s timezone and handle that yourself. A great post discussing this can be found on the Alfred forums. Because we aren’t working with any timezones though, we just are going to ignore them entirely and shut it off.

Next, we get to a simple $query = "{query}";. Here we are setting a new variable, named $query equal to the query we entered in Alfred. A query is whatever follows our keyword. For example, if we type “caffeinate 15” into Alfred, ‘caffeinate’ (or ‘caff’ if you went with something smaller) would be our keyword and ‘15’ would be our query. Because we need our query, which is the time, in minutes, that we would like to run caffeinate for, it’s important for us to set this variable.

Before we do anything with this information, we need to make sure that what was entered is a number. While you wouldn’t intentionally put non-numbers in this, you may accidently hit an extra key, so we want to make sure that we account for that possibility. To do this we put an if / else statement. The if (is_numeric($query)) checks if the query we entered is numeric, if it is, we run all of the code between the curly braces which ends right before the else statement. If it’s false, we go straight to the else code block (where you see the comment, //If they didn't enter a number, we want to prevent this script from continuing). Here we echo out, which will go to our notification, that a number was not entered, please enter a number.

If we did enter a number though, we need to keep working with the query because we are entering how many minutes we would like for caffeinate to run. As mentioned earlier, the caffeinate function doesn’t work with time in minutes, and instead it works in seconds. So the next thing we do is $query * 60 and set that equal to a new variable called $timeInSeconds. While there are more concise ways of doing this, I leave the original variable alone in case we need to reference it later, or if you wanted to try to expand the code and use it for something more advanced.

Now we get to the real important part of the script, setting up the command. I like to keep my command separate from the execution, though you certainly could do this other ways. For me, this is easier to read and understand from an education perspective, but not as effective from a performance standpoint. Anyway, here we have the line $shellCommand = "caffeinate -dsit" . $timeInSeconds . ">/dev/null 2>&1 &";. Don’t worry though, while this looks pretty intimidating, it’s actually nice and simple.

First, we start with the command we want to run, which in this case is caffeinate. Next, we are setting some options for what we want caffeinate to do. In this case, that is the -dsit. The d tells the operating system that we want to prevent the display from sleeping, the s tells the operating system that we would like to prevent the machine from sleeping.

This flag only works though when your machine is connected to an AC power source, otherwise it will be ignored. The i tells the opertaing system that we would like to prevent the machine from idle sleeping. Lastly, we set the t option which tells the operating system that we will be specifying a time length for this process, then we would like the process to stop and allow our machine to sleep as normal.

After setting our options we then need to specify our time, so that the t option we set knows when to stop. To do this, we close our single quote and put a period after it. This period indicates that we are concatinating the script. For those who aren’t familiar with concatenation, it’s basically a fancy way of saying we aren’t done with our command, we just have to put something different, such as our variable, next. We then put the $timeInSeconds variable in place, because as you remember, we need the time to be in seconds for the command to understand what we would like it to do. After this, we use the period again to continue our script and reopen our single quotes.

In the single quotes, you’ll see some weird looking stuff. This section, the >/dev/null 2>&1 looks scary but it’s not nearly as scary as it sounds and looks. Workflow Help & Questions subforum is a goldmine of information for individuals looking to extend Alfred. I can say from experience that David Ferguson, one of the Alfred staff members, is fantastic and is always willing to help developers however he can.

A great resource though that can easily be lost in the forum is David’s PHP Workflow’s Class This resource is an extremely useful resource that can make writing an Alfred app workflow even easier. David’s PHP class gives you a lot of handy features that save you as a developer time and energy in regards to preparing your content and interacting with Alfred itself. Using the class is very simple though and if you have questions, users are extremely helpful on the Alfred forums.

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Tying It All Together

Great job for working through this, whether you made both workflows, just one, or just wanted an intro to workflows. In my personal opinion, workflows alone are enough of a reason to purchase the powerpack, as they give you such a great opportunity to expand upon the developer’s thoughts and plans and add features that are important and helpful for you and that save you time and energy.

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this tutorial. If you think I missed something, or feel that I should really cover another aspect of Alfred, let me know in the comments, below.

]]> http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/app-training/up-and-running-with-the-alfred-powerpack-workflows/feed/ 0 http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/app-training/up-and-running-with-the-alfred-powerpack-the-basics/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=up-and-running-with-the-alfred-powerpack-the-basics http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/app-training/up-and-running-with-the-alfred-powerpack-the-basics/#comments Thu, 06 Jun 2013 12:00:18 +0000 Kevin Kirsche http://mac.tutsplus.com/?p=48855 For many years Mac users have been blessed with a number of great launcher applications. These applications allow you to use keywords or hotkey combinations to quickly launch an application or perform a particular action. Recently, one of the top launcher applications, Alfred app, was updated to version two. With this update comes a plethora of new and improved features. In this tutorial I’ll be showing you the unique and powerful features available to Alfred app Powerpack users.

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The Basics

What Is Alfred and How Do I Use It?

Alfred app, to be referred to as Alfred from here on in, is a launcher application for Mac OS X 10.6+ that is aimed at minimizing the time you spend searching for things and maximizing your time doing exactly what you want. In essence, Alfred gives you a text box that let’s you type in what you are looking for or looking to do. We won’t be going over the basics too much in this tutorial, but feel free to ask anything any questions in the comments.

Launch Alfred Your Way.

Alfred is launched via a hotkey set in the General Preferences pane. By default, Alfred is set to use the combination of use Cmd + Space. To access the preferences pane you can do one of the following:

1. Click on the small black hat icon in the menu bar and select the second option, “Preferences…”
2. Launch Alfred. In the top right hand corner of the Alfred Window is a small cog wheel. Clicking on this cog wheel will open the preferences.
3. Launch Alfred and use the keyword Alfred. In the list of results you will see Show Alfred Preferences in the results. Press Return and the preferences will pop up.




To change your hotkey to one of your choice, click on the box near the top labeled Alfred Hotkey. You will know it is selected by a highlight around the white box. Press the key combination of your choice. If your new hotkey was successful, you will see it reflected in that box.

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Supercharging Alfred With the Powerpack

What Is the Powerpack?

Alfred users have two options depending on the features they are looking for. Basic features such as finding applications and files, doing quick searches, or using the calculator or dictionary are free of charge and is available to any Mac OS X user with 10.6+ (Snow Leopard or higher). This is great because it allows you to easily try the application without having to commit to purchasing the application.

These basics only scratch the surface of the potential of Alfred version 2 though. For users willing to purchase the Powerpack, a number of amazing features are unlocked that will leave you wondering how you survived without them. The Powerpack is available on the Alfred website beginning at £15.

What Does the Powerpack Provide?

The Powerpack provides a number of features in a few different areas. Today, I’ll be showing you how to use the following Powerpack features:

• Syncing (via Dropbox)
• Custom Searches
• Email
• 1Password
• iTunes
• Workflows

Today, we’ll be talking about the first 5 features of the powerpack, and you’ll soon see a second post to this series focusing on workflows and the powers that they offer to you. While today’s lesson covers a majority of the great features available within Alfred, we may not cover some specific pieces which you are looking for. If that is the case, I would highly recommend visiting the Alfred Support site’s features section. This does a great job of touching on anything and everything that you may have questions on and does a great job of showing and explaining the application.

Activating Your Powerpack License

Once you purchase the Powerpack from Alfred’s website, you will receive an email containing your license information. To activate your license, launch Alfred’s preferences in the same manner that we did above. On the far right of the top menu bar you will see what looks like a partially filled battery icon with the label Powerpack. Click the Activate your Powerpack button and enter your information and away we go!




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Syncing

The largest feature for users who own multiple Mac machines, is Alfred’s new syncing functionality. Alfred allows users to easily sync their settings between machines via Dropbox. It is important to note though that Alfred’s developers suggest setting up syncing first on your primary Mac machine. The reason for this is that the first machine you set this feature up on will be considered the master machine and if there are preference conflicts, the primary machine’s settings will be used. If you inadvertently set syncing up on a machine that isn’t your primary, the only way to correct it is to delete the preferences and set up syncing again.

What Information Syncs?

While Alfred’s syncing is fantastic, there are some things which it does not sync for your safety and convenience. Specifically, it is important to note that Alfred does not sync the following preferences:

• Alfred’s main hotkey and default search scope (Features pane > Default Results > Search Scope).
• Currently selected theme (allows for use of different themes on each Mac).
• Dictionary language for spell and define words (Features pane > Dictionary > Language).
• Clipboard History Enabled and history data (Features pane > Clipboard > Clipboard History).
• Custom home folder location for File Search navigation (Features pane > File Search > Advanced tab > Use custom home folder location.)
• 1Password enabled and keychain location (Features pane > 1Password > Enable 1Password Bookmarks)

While this information does not sync, the majority of other information does. This includes workflows that you have installed, custom searches, and a multitude of other small bits and pieces. This makes it easy to try new workflows, change the general behavior of Alfred and more without any problems.

Setting Up Sync

To setup the syncing feature, launch Alfred’s preferences and navigate to the Advanced pane. You can find it by looking for the flask filled with a bubbling purple. Here there are a lot of settings. I recommend avoiding changing the majority of them unless you have a specific reason to as some of the options can erase what Alfred has learned about you. In the right hand column, about halfway down, you’ll see a syncing option. Click the Set sync folder… button and select your Dropbox folder.




it is important to note that at the time of writing this, Alfred has released the following statement about Dropbox syncing:

Note: The /Dropbox/Apps folder is proving to cause issues for users, as it appears to be reserved for apps using the Dropbox API (which Alfred does not use). This is why you’ll see the /Dropbox/Apps folder greyed out when setting the sync folder on your Mac.

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Custom Searches

Custom searches are a great way for you to expand and really personalize what Alfred can do for you. Custom searches allow you to quickly and easily search a website of your choice (that features search functionality) directly from Alfred. Today we’ll be setting up a custom search for MacTuts+ so that we can search for our favorite Mac articles from Alfred. To do this, we need to get the search URL from MacTuts+. While this sounds a bit intimidating, don’t worry. It’s nice and simple.

Getting the URL

To get the URL we navigate to the website we want to create a custom search for and search for something. For getting the URL, I usually search for “TESTING” (without quotes) so that I can easily find where what I was searching for appears in the URL. After running the search, you’ll get a screen showing you the results. What we are looking for though is the URL though as we will need this to create our custom search. Once we get it, I recommend leaving the page open until we finish setting up the custom search.




Creating the Search

To create the search, we have to launch Alfred’s preferences and navigate to the Features pane. On the left hand navigation, choose Web Search. Here, we will be presented with a list of our available searches.




In the bottom right of this panel you will notice a button reading Add Custom Search. Click this button and you will be presented with a modal asking for the Search URL, Title, Keyword, Icon and Validation. In the Search URL, let’s paste (Cmd + V) our search URL in the field labeled Search URL. If we left our URL as it is, any time we run this search, it would search for the word, “TESTING.” This isn’t the behavior that we want as we would like to be able to search for our own thing. To allow us to search for whatever we would like, replace “TESTING” in the URL with “{query}”. This will take whatever you search for and put it where the website is looking for your search terms.

For some sites, this URL will be more complex than this. Amazon for example has the search term in the middle of the URL. This is fine, simply locate the word “TESTING” (or the word you searched for) and replace it with “{query}” leaving the rest of the URL alone.

Next, we want to set a Title. The title is what will be displayed in large black text in the Alfred window. For example, when we launched Alfred’s preferences, the title read, “Show Alfred Preferences.” Similar to the URL though, we can use the “{query}” in our title. I will use “Search MacTuts+ for {query}” as it will tell me where I am searching and what I am searching for.

With our title setup, we want to put a keyword. A keyword is what we will use with Alfred to begin our search. I will use “mt+” but feel free to use whatever works best for you.

On the right hand side, you will see a square with the text below saying, “Drop icon above. Will be resized if needed.” This is where you can put an icon that will be displayed to the left of the title when searching. For the purpose of this tutorial, we will not be putting in an icon, but you can easily do this by dragging an image onto that square and releasing. This will place the icon there, and you will see a preview of that image in the box.

Lastly, you’ll see the Validation box with “alfredapp” in the text box. The validation box is there to allow you to test the custom search to ensure that your custom search funtions correctly. In this box, it’s a good idea to always test your custom search with something with a space in it. The reason for this is because we need to be sure that Alfred is correctly encoding our query in the URL. Simply test for “TESTING THIS.” If it works correctly, Alfred will open a the MacTuts+ website and search for that. If it does not work, we will want to check the box for Encode spaces as +. With this information there, you should have the following panel:




After running our test, we see that everything is working correctly and we have no problems. Now we can click Save and our web search is saved so that we can use it in the future.

Using Custom Searches as Fallback Searches

Occasionally, Alfred may not be able to find what you are looking for locally. In these cases, we can customize our fallback searches to reflect our common searches. To choose what appears as a fallback search, navigate to Features > Defaults Results > Setup fallback results. You will find the button at the bottom of the Default Results panel. After clicking this button you will be presented with the following modal:




To add our recently created custom search, click the small + button to the upper right of the Save button. You will be presented with two different fly-out menus, Web Search and Custom Search. We created a custom search, so we navigate over Custom Search and then click on our MacTuts+ custom search. We now have MacTuts+ as one of our fallback searches!

Using Workflows to Enhance the Default Searches

While Alfred offers quite a number of search options by default, there are ways to make these even better through workflows. I will be explaining Workflows in more depth next time, but the basics are that they allow you do a series of actions or trigger code allowing Alfred to do more things than what it is enabled by default. Luckily for us, Alfred ships with two great workflows to enhance the Amazon and Google searches provided by default.

These workflows allow Alfred to return results to you in the Alfred launcher window as such:




To add this workflow, navigate to the Workflows pane. On the left is a list of the workflows that you have installed. You will notice at the bottom of the column is a + button which is used to add or create new workflows. Click the + button to be presented with a fly-out menu. For what we are doing, we want to choose the Examples menu. This will then list a series of different workflows that enhance Alfred’s built in features. Choose Amazon Suggest from the menu. You will then see the workflow in the left column with the details of the workflow on the right as seen in the image below.




In the leftmost box you will see a word above an icon, in this case, “amazon”. This is the keyword that can be used to begin the workflow. In the case of amazon suggest, we can launch Alfred, type “amazon” followed by our query and we will receive our results from Amazon in the Workflow.

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Alfred’s Email Capabilities

Alfred not only let’s you quickly and easily find files of interest, but it also let’s you email those files to your contacts. Alfred gets your list of contacts from the Contacts (previously Address Book) that is included with Mac OS X.




Setting Up Alfred to Send Emails

First and foremost we want to make sure that Alfred is configured to handle email how you want it to. To see how Alfred is configured, navigate to Features > Contacts > Email (tab in the center). At the top, ensure that Email a contact is checked and that the keyword to the right is what you would like. For the purpose of our tutorial I will leave the default “email” keyword.

Some users may not be a fan of using a mail client such as Mail.app which ships with Mac machines. Luckily, Alfred supports a number of desktop clients including Mail.app, Mailplane, Postbox 2, Postbox Express, and Sparrow. Not only does Alfred support multiple desktop clients, Alfred also supports Gmail for composing messages if you prefer by checking the Webmail option. Otherwise, Alfred will use the default email application on your Mac.

How to Create A Blank Email

The first and easiest way to send an email is by using the “email” keyword. Launch Alfred, type “email”, then type either the email address you would like to email or the name of the contact who you would like to email. If you use the contacts, Alfred will display a list of addresses for the specific contact. Simply press return or the corresponding hotkey to select the contact who you would like to email.




How to Create an Email With an Attachment

Not only can Alfred create a blank email, it can also send emails with attachments. To do this, we search for the file we would like to send. This can either be done using the words to search for the file (if you have files enabled in your search scope) or by navigating to the file using Alfred’s file search. To begin a file search, we use the backslash (/) and then navigate to the location of choice.

If you are looking to navigate to your desktop for example, you would navigate to /Users/YourUsername/Desktop/. Once you have found the file you would like to email press the right arrow key or the ctrl key. If for whatever reason those do not show you the actions panel, you can check that they are enabled by navigating to Features > File Search > Actions (fourth tab from the left) and ensure the right arrow and the ctrl checkboxes are enabled. The actions panel looks like this:




From the Actions panel, select either Email or Email To…. If you select Email, Alfred will attach the file to a blank email with no contact suggested. If you select Email To…, Alfred will then prompt you to enter the contact name that you would like to email. Type in the name of the contact and press return. If the contact has multiple email addresses, you will then be shown a list of email addresses associated with that contact. Select the email address you would like to send to and press return. This will open an email to that individual with the file you selected attached.

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1Password Integration

For 1Password users, you are in for a treat. Alfred app offers 1Password users a 1Click integration with existing bookmarks. If you are unfamiliar with 1Password, let me give you a quick introduction.

What Is 1Password?

With today’s ever increasing reliance on digital services, passwords have become a large part of everyones life. Sadly though, many users today use the same password across multiple services. This is dangerous because if someone was to gain your password, they would have access to each and every one of your accounts. Luckily, Agile Bits has a great solution available called 1Password. With 1Password you have a safe location to store unique passwords for each website you use. To gain acccess to any of these passwords, you use one master password allowing you to remember only one password while still being safe and secure for each of your accounts.

To facilitate this for users, Agile Bits provides users with browser extensions for Safari, Firefox and Google Chrome. These browser extensions allow you to enter your master password, press return and have your information filled into the respective areas of your page. For Alfred Powerpack users though, this is made even easier. With 1Password integration enabled, you can simply type “1p” followed by the name of the bookmark to quickly launch the bookmark, with the login form filled in, in your default browser.

Enabling 1Password Integration

By default, Alfred app has 1Password integration disabled. Also, I want to remind you that your 1Password settings in Alfred do not sync between machines. This can be important if you use Alfred on a shared machine. To enable 1Password integration, navigate to Features > 1Password. At the top of this screen, you will see a checkbox next to Enable 1Password Bookmarks. Checking this box will enable 1Password integration within Alfred. If you prefer to use a different keyword than the default “1p” to access your 1Password bookmarks, you can type in a new keyword in the box next to the label Keyword.




For most users, Alfred will find the location of your bookmarks correctly. If for whatever reason Alfred does not find your bookmarks though, click on the Advanced button on the bottom right of the list of bookmarks. Clicking this button will bring up a window that allows you to enter the location of your 1Password bookmarks file. Uncheck the box that says Discover Automatically and type in the exact location of the bookmarks file to ensure Alfred knows the location.

If the machine you use is a private computer, if you prefer, you can choose to not use a keyword to access your bookmarks. This means that you can directly type the name of your 1Password bookmarks into Alfred and open them in your web browser.

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Conclusion

Phew! We have covered a lot of information in this tutorial. We’ve covered the different powerpack features, including:

• Syncing (via Dropbox)
• Custom Searches
• Email
• 1Password
• iTunes

We’ve gone over using each of these and hopefully answered a lot of the questions that you may have about the Powerpack and how to really take advantage of it. In my next tutorial, I’ll be talking about workflows and explaining what they are, how to use them, and other great information as we talk about one of the most powerful and interesting new features in Alfred.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial, and please, if you have any questions leave a comment below and I will try to get answer any questions I can.

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