When you drag an application to the trash, you’re only deleting the actual program. You’re not deleting any of the files that allow that program to run. In Windows terms, it’s like deleting a program yet leaving all the registry entries intact; it’s just not good for the longevity/speed of the Operating System. This is why AppDelete is so essential to the life of OS X.

Fortuntely, AppDelete is very reasonably priced at $7.99 for a new user and $3.99 to upgrade from a previous version of AppDelete. And if that’s not good enough, the makers are also offering a free trial of AppDelete so you can see how amazing the app really is before you purchase it. I tried it out and I absolutely love it; so much, infact, that I purchased it for my own system. So give the trial a shot and, if you like it, buy the damn program. It’ll be the best $8 you’ve ever spent.

AGH! MY EYES!

Compare that to the new iTunes 9, with the option for a dark background:

Yay! I can see again!

Now, doesn’t that look better, Apple? The option is under Preferences -> General.

Apple didn’t just update iTunes for the dark background option, however. The update was really to keep iTunes up to speed with the new fugly Apple TV interface, which for some reason I’m not going to talk about.

1. The Music App

When the iPod came out in 2001, it virtually created the PMP market, so you’d think an iPod’s primary job would be to, err, play music. Not so with the iPod Touch, as the music app lacks the polish normally expected of Apple products:

And the biggest, most annoying thing about music app is that if you go to Artists, choose one, and play a couple songs, when go back to choose another artist, it takes you to Albums instead of Artists, which is just stupid.

Another thing with the music app: Coverflow. I really hate it when I’m sitting down and I choose a new song and then lock the screen and put my hand with the iPod on my lap, and when I wake it up to choose another song, fucking Coverflow butts in like an obnoxious fat kid who wants your lunch.

2. The Mail App

Seriously, no “Mark all as Read” button, Apple? Seriously?

3. The Back

The chrome finish on the back is ugly, attracts fingerprints, and scratches easily. I would much rather prefer a matte black finish like the one on this rumored iPhone 3GS.

4. Smudgy Screen

I hate having to clean things, which is why I hate how smudgy the screen is. I know Apple introduced an oleophobic coating with the iPhone 3GS, but they could have, and should have, done it sooner.

5. No Camera

OK, Apple, so you’ll give the Nano a crappy little camera that can only take video, but you won’t give the iPod Touch anything? And those reports of pervs looking up girls’ skirts with the new Nano? Yeah, I’d like to see someone try looking up my skirt with a fricken iPod Touch in their hands. Oh wait; nevermind, I don’t wear skirts.

Aside from the things listed here, I think the iPod Touch is wonderful and I’d recommend it to my friends and blah, blah, blah. But it is a great device.

New MacBook:

• Curvy unibody polycarbonate shell
• Button-less glass trackpad
• New LCD display
• Built-in 7-hour Li-Ion battery
• Faster 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
• No Firewire (sob)
• Combined audio-in/-out
• Rubberized bottom panel
• Starts at $999

New iMac:

• Awesome display in 27- and 21.5-inch varieties with 16:9 aspect ratio
• Intel Core 2 Duo processors up to 3.33 GHz, option for 2.66 GHz Core i5 or 2.8 GHz Core i7 in November
• Integrated NVIDIA GeForce 9400M or high-end ATI Radeon HD 4670
• 4GB of RAM, upgradeable to 16GB
• Disk storage up to 2TB
• SD card slot below optical drive
• Black and silver remote that looks like an iPod design reject
• Starts at $1199

Magic Mouse:

• Touch-sensitive surface; gestures for scrolling and going back in browser history; still clicks like old Mighty Mouse
• Powered by two AAs, which can last up to four months
• Bluetooth only; no wires
• $69

Other new things include a spec-bump on the Mac Mini, a new configuration for the Mini that acts as a server with two HDDs instead of an optical drive, a spec-bump to Time Capsule that should make it 60% faster, and a new MagSafe adapter that’s silver instead of white.

If you were waiting to get a MacBook Pro because you can’t afford it, I’d just get the MacBook; it has the same specs and it’s $200 cheaper. But sooner or later, the Pros will be getting Core i5/7 processors, so keep that in mind.

Microsoft, in a not-so-well-thought-out move, has actually let this horrible, horrible, horrible advertisement for Windows 7 launch parties out of the torture chamber basement to see the light of day (not to mention the stares of disbelief and disgust of several thousand unwitting people). What do you get when you cram four people into a room, give them a script to read like mindless robots, and then have them pretend to like each other? This monstrosity:

Around the 5:42 mark (and I’m amazed I made it that far), the black guy asks, “Can you believe that Microsoft put the launch of Windows 7 in our hands?” I’ve got a better question: “Can you believe that Microsoft actually made this and then put it on the internet?” Sadly, I can, having experienced the utter strangeness of the Seinfeld ads (and MS has had even stranger ads before).

Common’ Microsoft, you guys were doing OK for awhile with the Laptop Hunter ads (not). Get it together!

Recently, Alex did a post on iTunes 9 being beaten with the ugly stick. While I can’t say I disagree, I will admit that he left one thing out; iTunes 9 is insanely slow! Clicking pause takes a couple seconds before it pauses the song, clicking play has the same issue, and iTunes takes longer to launch. Call me crazy, but I am not willing to give up speed and reliability for home sharing, iTunes LP, and a so-called “improved” iTunes store. Once I realized how god awful iTunes 9 was, I immediately tried to downgrade back to iTunes 8. Fortunately, this was easier than I thought it would be. To downgrade back down to iTunes 8:

1) Quit iTunes

2) Delete iTunes from your Applications folder

3) Go to your ~/Music/iTunes folder with ~ referring to your Home/User Folder. Delete or rename the “iTunes Library” file

4) Open the “Previous iTunes Libraries” folder and look for your iTunes 8 library. You’ll be able to tell by the date as it should be dated at about the time you first ran iTunes 9. Copy the most recent pre-9 file to ~/Music/iTunes and rename it to “iTunes Library”

5) Go to the /Library/Receipts folder and delete the iTunesX and iTunesAccess packages

6) Download iTunes 8.2.1 directly from Apple. The page says it’s for G3, but it’s actually the regular iTunes kept online for G3 users who can’t run iTunes 9. Launch the dmg and run the installer.

7) iTunes should now launch with all your Music, Video, Playlists, etc. already added. Any changes you made while running iTunes 9 will be lost, but it’s a small price to pay for reliability.

If you found this guide useful then feel free to make a donation by clicking the link at the end of the Author’s Mini-Biography or by clicking on some ads around the site. Any amount truly does help

iUgly

Fucked up gradients and blindingly white backgrounds? Why, Apple, why?!

Oh, and Mindless Self Indulgence kicks ass; check ‘em out.

In other news, Apple updated their line of iPods. The Shuffle now comes in more colors and still kinda sucks, the Classic got a space bump to 160 GBs for the same price, the Nano got a sparkly new camera, and the iPod touch got a processor bump and still has no camera (and here’s some theories on why).

All in all, not too exciting for an Apple event. Steve’s back on stage with the liver of a 20-something-year-old who got hit by a car. That’s interesting, right?

Update: Apple’s released footage of the keynote which is available for download here.

Update 2: You can make iTunes 9 less ugly with this unofficial patch (OS X only, for now).

Snow Leopard, Apple’s next OS in their lineup after Leopard, and it can be installed on your PC just a couple of days after it was released. Fortunately, this OS is quite easy to install (Much easier than Leopard) and, for the first time on the 1525, we will be booting a retail copy of OS X. This means certain things such as WiFi will no longer be broken after updates and will never have to be installed again.

We will be running Snow Leopard in 64-bit 32-bit. Ethernet works native and so does Quartz Extreme Support. A couple things such as the Internal Microphone, SD Card Reader(Fixed by Step 19), HDMI, S-Video, and VGA Mirrored Display still aren’t working but as seen with Leopard, fixes are released over time that fix these issues. Attempting to repair permissions using Disk Utility brings up an error and the system experiences random kernel panics.(Fixed by step 21) Snow Leopard is still far from perfect. Just remember that you need a working Leopard install prior to installing Snow Leopard.

1. For installation, we need a .DMG of the install disc. You can learn how to make one from your Snow Leopard Install DVD here.

a) If you want to install Snow Leopard on your current MBR Disk then  “… simply download this (thanks to The Edge3000) and place it in /Volumes/Mac OS X Install DVD/System/Installation/Packages.” (Source: Infinitemac.com)

2. Launch Terminal from within Leopard and type

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

killall Finder

3. Now mount the Snow Leopard DMG from step 1

4. Then from the mounted DMG, go to System –> Installation –> Packages and double click on OSInstall.mpkg

5. The Snow leopard installer will now launch. If it gives you a message about your computer not being compatible just quit the installer and launch it again

6. Click continue through the License Agreement until you arrive at the install options. Then click “Change Install Location” and select the drive you want to install Snow Leopard on (It cannot be the drive/partition you’re currently booted to)

7. Now click on Customize and select which components you would like to install

8. Go ahead with the install and when it finishes, click Close but don’t restart yet. You now need to install some drivers to the partition so that it will boot

9. Download the drivers pack here and unzip it to your desktop

10. Open the unzipped folder and go to the Needed Kexts folder. Copy the 6 kexts from the folder to /System/Library/Extensions/ located in your Snow Leopard partition

11. Then open the Kexts folder again and mount Chameleon.dmg. Run Chameleon_v1012.pkg and install it to your Snow Leopard partition (Alternatively, you can skip this step and step 12 and just follow this guide for a much sexier and much newer Chameleon)

12. Launch Terminal and type the following. You must swap <<Snow Leopard Partition>> with the name of your partition. If the name contians more than one word then separate the words witha blackslash and a space. For example, if the name of my Snow Leopard partition was Snow Leopard then I would need to type it as cp /Volumes/Snow\ Alternative/boot /Volumes/Snow\ Leopard

sudo -s

cp /Volumes/Snow\ Alternative/boot /Volumes/<<Snow Leopard Partition>>

13. Copy the dsdt.aml from your Leopard partition to the root of your Snow Leopard partiiton

14. Go to the Extra folder in the root of your Snow Leopard partition and inside that folder, create a new Folder called Extensions. Then copy the kexts from “Extra Folder” to the new Extensions folder

15. Once again open up the unzipped folder on your Desktop and unzip VoodooPS2Controller-0.98-installer.pkg.zip. Then run the .pkg and check the Trackpad option when on the Installation Type step. Change the Install Location to your Snow Leopard partition and install

16. Now you can boot to your Snow Leopard partition. Boot with the -f flag and go through the process of setting up your User Account. When you get to your desktop, WiFi should already be working (if you have a Broadcom 1395 chipset)

17. Either download or launch Kext Helper on your Leopard partition. Copy VoodooBattery.kext and VoodooHDA.kext from your Kexts folder on your Leopard partition to your Desktop. Then kext helper the two kexts and reboot. Upon rebooting, Audio and Battery Meter should now be working

18. Download the trackpad preference pane here and then install it using the included instructions. This will allow you to change the speed of the trackpad/mouse pointer

19. Download the SD Card Fix (Thanks R), unzip the file, and kext helper VoodooSDHC.kext

20. Download the Hard Drive Icon Fix (Thanks WhY.SoOo.Serious), unzip the file, and copy AppleRTC.kext to your /Extra/Extensions/ folder. If this doesn’t work for you then you can try Kext Helpering the kext from Snow Leopard.

21. Mount your Snow Leopard Install DVD DMG and navigate to /System/Installation/Packages/. Then run BSD.pkg and install it to your Snow Leopard partition (while booted to your snow Leopard Partition). 9 times out of 10 you will get a Kernel Panic during the install process and be forced to restart. This is OK. I had to install BSD.pkg 8 times before it had one successful install. Eventually, the package will install without a KP at which point you should hit OK on the install screen and then restart. Boot back to Snow Leopard and you will notice two things: 1) The system will be much more stable and you should stop receiving those damn Kernel Panics and 2) you can now repair permission in Disk Utility without getting an error.

Drop a comment below about how your install went or any problems you are facing. You absolutely must follow steps 11 and 12 or you will most likely receive a Kernel Panic whenever you try to boot.

If you found this guide useful then feel free to make a donation by clicking the link at the end of the Author’s Mini-Biography or by clicking on some ads around the site. Any amount truly does help

Released today, Apple’s latest version of OS X (10.6) dubbed “Snow Leopard” has arrived. While looking at it from first glance, you can’t tell many differences from your old Mac running the plain cat (Leopard). But start poking around long enough and you’ll find… Whoa — fast, small, sexy. Apple delivers and no matter what anyone says: “10″ will always be better than “7.”

So, who’s got it? And more importantly, who’s got it running on their non-Apple hardware? I’m sure we’re only days away from what could be the greatest possible “HackBook” tutorial ever — SnowBook.

Feel free to report anything you’ve found out regarding running Mac OS X 10.6 on your HackBooks and Hackintoshes here!

This was a very big issue for not only me but many other 1525 users. The cause of this is a very simple one; the trackpad is being hit/tapped ever so slightly while your pounding away on your keys. Our touchpad is super sensitive in OS X so even the slightest touch is read as a deliberate tap on the trackpad. And since a tap on the trackpad is read as a click, a “click” is recognized as being initiated at wherever your mouse pointer is located. There’s an option in the Trackpad Preference Pane in System Preferences called “Ignore Accidental Trackpad Input” and when checked, it ignores all of these accidental taps on the trackpad. Well, it does for Real Macs. This option doesn’t work for us Hackintoshers (At least not on the 1525) because our non-fully-supported hardware is, well, not fully supported. Fortunately, there is a workaround for this and experimenting with System Preferences late last night I was able to figure it out.

The solution is probably the simplest to date yet it solves one of the most annoying issues. To stop this accidental clicking again, go to System Preferences -> Trackpad. Then uncheck the option for “Clicking.” That’s it! The annoying issue will now stop. There is one negative to this fix and it’s that tapping will no longer work. In other words, tapping on the trackpad will no longer be recognized as a click. But, in the long run, its worth giving up tapping so that your text no longer come out all jbulemd.

If you felt that this guide helped you in anyway then please feel free to make a donation through Paypal or click on some ads around the site to help us with out hosting costs.

One of the disadvantages of switching over to this OS from Windows was that, at the time, Lojack only had an application for Windows. They hadn’t yet made a Mac version of their anti-theft software. I was fine with this as I wasn’t going to let that stop me from running the best OS ever made. A couple months ago, I saw that Lojack had made an application for OS X. You could now purchase Lojack anti-theft protection for your Mac Laptop. But I didn’t want to purchase the service again when I already had it for another two years. Being the genius that I am, I said “Why don’t I just activating Lojack for OS X with my Registration Code??” One thing lead to another and… it didn’t work. I got a nice big error telling me that the registration code was invalid. A couple months passed by and this morning, being in a good mood, I decided to try using my Registration Code again for OS X. I downloaded the software I needed and this time, much to my surprise, it registered just fine.

You too can use your Lojack Anti-Theft Protection in OS X by following these simple steps:

1. Log in to Lojack

2. Once logged in, click the big “Remove Button”

3. Open a new tab and once again Login to Lojack’s site

4. Download the OS X version of their software

5. Install the software and when asked for it, type your Registration Code (Can be found on the Lojack page you logged in to before)

6. Activation can take up to 5 minutes and may even beach ball but when it completes, you will be taken to a page on Lojack’s site.

7. OS X is now activated with Lojack Anti-Theft protection originally for Windows!

8. To be sure everything’s working, run a test call by clicking “Test Call” on that same page

If you felt that this guide helped you in anyway then please feel free to make a donation through Paypal or click on some ads around the site to help us with out hosting costs.

On Amazon’s Pre-Order page for the Snow Leopard $29 Upgrade, it clearly lists the System Requirements. The System Requirements are split into two sections and it’s these two sections that give me what I believe to be the convincing information that I need to believe Snow Leopard will support 32-bit. If you look at the second section, Feature-Specific requirements (Read: Optional Requirements), you will see listed “64-bit support requires a Mac with a 64-bit processor.” In other words, 64-Bit support is Feature-Specific/Optional and only needed for certain features (such as the 64-bit kernel). Everything listed in the “Feature-Specific requirements” is optional as can be seen by the other items listed in this section including Boot Camp, Time Machine, and Photo Booth, all of which are optional. If all of these are optional then there’s no reason why if 64-Bit Support, which is listed under this same section, wouldn’t also be optional. Screenshots of the page are below, just in case Amazon tries to change their page. By the way, if the image looks a little funky its because I put together two screenshot to make one panoramic image.

So what do you think? Is this evidence enough? Drop a comment below and let me know.

Some samples:

1. Thomas say “Back-up your computer“. Listen to the man, and do it.

2. Download the 10.5.8 Drivers Pack. You won’t have WiFi or sound after the update.

3. Go over here and download the Combo Update. You can use Software Update, but the Combo Update is safer.

4. When the .dmg is finished downloading (it’ll take a while, it’s nearly 800 MB) the installer will automatically start (if you’re using Safari that is; if not, just double-click the .dmg and then run the .pkg). All you have to do it click Continue a couple times. Installation will take awhile. I almost force-quit the installer because it appeared to be stalling, but it wasn’t. Be patient. Go get some coffee and ruminate on whether Starbucks customers are addicts or assholes.

5. When the installer is done, you’ll be prompted to reboot. You’re first reboot will most likely fail. This is normal. It’ll probably reboot on its own, but if it doesn’t, just hold down the power button. Boot with the -v (verbose) flag next time to see if there are any errors. If you still can’t boot without getting a Kernel Panic, boot with -x and that will get you in.

6. If all goes well, you’ll be back at your desktop. Not much is broken; only WiFi and Sound. Unzip the driver pack you downloaded earlier and install the kexts. Be sure to repair disk permissions when you’re done.

Note: If the included audio driver doesn’t work for you try following Richard’s instructions.

7. Reboot and then download the Sleep Fix provided by Sami (Thanks Sami!)

8. Navigate to /System/Library/Extensions/ and delete IntelCPUPowerManagement.kext

9. Install the included Kext, Repair Permissions in Disk Utility, and then reboot with the -f flag

10. Thank Sami for this find!

The list of changes in 10.5.8, from Apple itself, include:

• Upgrades Safari to version 4.0.2
• Improves the accuracy of full history search in Safari 4.
• Improves overall Bluetooth reliability with external devices, USB webcams and printers.
• Addresses an issue that could cause extended startup times.
• Improves compatibility with some external USB hard drives.
• Includes latest security fixes.

Full release notes are here and details on security fixes are here. Happy upgrading!

Note: If there’s anything else that isn’t working take a look at the drivers guide.

Update 1: It looks like sleep is broken but we’re currently working on a fix.

Update 2: If you had the trackpad preference-pane installed, it’ll be gone. You can find it in the drivers guide mentioned earlier along with instruction on how to fix it.