KB SPECIAL | White as Snow Winter Special

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An amazing feat by Apple is how all of their products just plain work – and work together. Maybe a little too well perhaps.

One time when I was using my MacBook Pro a buddy of mine was shuffling through the Apple TV and my volume starts going up and down all on its own! Obviously my first thought went to virus and then I remembered I was using a Mac. Calmly and cooly I told my self there’s no such thing as ghosts and turned to my friend to show him what was happening. He and I both shared a laugh as I realized it was him not only controlling the Apple TV but my Mac as well. Knowing now what the issue was I went back to using my computer but now I was facing his ugly mug to prevent the Apple Remote from controlling my machine.

Apple Remotes run off a simple infrared (IR) technology that luckily can be paired and more importantly un-paired with your other Apple products.

Follow these steps to *pair* a remote with your Mac:
* Log in on your Mac as an Admin user.
* Get very close to your Mac (about 3 or 4 inches away).
* Point the remote at the infrared sensor on the front of your Mac.
* Press and hold the Menu and Next/Fast-forward buttons simultaneously on the remote for 5 seconds.
* Your Apple Remote is now paired with your computer. You should see a chain-link style lock appear in the center of your screen for a moment.

Follow these steps to *un-pair* a remote with your Mac:
* Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu in the upper-left menu bar.
* Choose Security from the View menu.
* Click the lock and enter your Administrator password if necessary.
* Click Un-pair in the Security pane.

The strange thing about my story is that I never paired the Apple Remote to my Mac in the first place and the Apple TV was purchased months after the MacBook Pro was. To fix my issue I simply turned off IR on my Mac.

Follow these steps to turn off (or on) IR reception with your Mac:
* Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu in the upper-left menu bar.
* Choose Security from the View menu.
* Click the lock and enter your Administrator password if necessary.
* In OS X Lion v10.7 or later, click the “Advanced” button in the lower-right corner.
* Enable the “Disable remote control infrared receiver” checkbox.
* In OS X Lion v10.7 or later, click the OK button.

After some time of owning any type of computer, you might begin to collect large amounts of files. Just like in real life, it is important to regularly do some spring cleaning with your machine in order to keep things running smoothly.

In computer life, when you run out of space, you run the risk of the computer accidentally overwriting very important system files — such as the ones that make your computer run. It is always a good idea to be proactive with storage management because once those files are overwritten, they are gone forever — only a clean install will guarantee their recovery. Therefore, first I want to talk about a few ways to monitor the amount of free space you have on your Mac.

If you are using a Mac running OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) or earlier, you can easily check the amount of free space you have by selecting the hard drive icon on your desktop and hitting Command + I. This will open a new window with a section called General containing two lines labeled Capacity and Available. They will respectively tell you the total capacity of the drive and the total amount you have taken up of that drive.

If you are using a Mac running OS X Lion (10.7) or newer, Apple improved the ability to discern what it taking up space on your machine a little bit better. To find this information open the *Apple Menu* by clicking the apple icon in the top left of your screen and select the *About This Mac* option. In the new window that pops up, click the *More Info…* button. Doing so will open up a different view of the About This Mac window. Clicking on the *Storage* tab will show a visual breakdown of a few predetermined types of files you have on your machine and how much space each is taking up.

Now you may notice that there is a catch-all category called *Other* and wonder what that is and why it is so big. The short and sweet version is that it is a bunch of important system files that the average person shouldn’t really mess with. However, if you are still interested in figuring out what exactly the “other” category is, comprised of there is a free app called “*Disk Inventory X*”:http://www.derlien.com/index.html that I use to see a complete break down of every thing on my drive. It is sort of like the About This Mac utility on steroids and isn’t for the faint of heart. It even gives you the ability to delete things right from the app. However, I don’t recommend using it for much more than investigating what is taking up space so you don’t accidentally delete something important.

So you’ve got all this information, now what does it mean? Well, Our IT department suggests that you have 10-20% of your total capacity free on your drive regardless of the type of drive (hard drive or solid state drive). This will ensure that no files are accidentally overwritten. By using these tools you can proactively monitor how close you are getting to that mark and adjust how you are saving or begin moving files.

In the next installment of Cleaning Up Your Mac, I will detail my best practices for deleting and managing your files to maximize your storage space. Tune in next week for the exciting conclusion.

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_Dear Friends,_

Don is taking a short holiday in Jamaica this week at Grace’s insistence, and we’re happy to report that he’s relaxing on the beach and feeling irie. We’re holding down the (very, very cold) fort here in Vermont, and we’re thinking warm, sandy thoughts to get us through the week.

I’ve started working on the annual keynote that we present to Apple, and it’s been a nice reminder of all of the goals we have to honor our mission of People, Planet, and Profit, as well as a sobering reminder of all of the irons we have in the fire! (__Oooh…fire. That’d be nice.__)

We really do strive to incorporate a community and environmental-minded element to what we do; as Don says, it’s not enough to just “pile a bunch of dollar bills on the table and say that you’ve accomplished something.” Each year, we take a look at how we can achieve those goals, and it’s a weekly conversation in our management meeting.

We’d love to hear from you regarding our social responsibility mission and if you have any ideas that we could consider. Email us at “*hello@smalldog.com*”:mailto:hello@smalldog.com with general feedback or questions; if you have a formal request for consideration in our Charitable Giving Program, please “*visit our website here*”:http://www.smalldog.com/charity for directions and details.

It’s hard to believe that the month of January is almost coming to a close. Did you make any resolutions this year? Many of us who did are still hanging in, though it helps that we kept them generally realistic!

Thanks for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes! ‘Til next week.

_Kali, Mike & Steph_