Kibbles & Bytes Blog

I wrote a few weeks ago in “Tech Tails #688”:http://blog.smalldog.com/techtails/?c=tt688 about a 27-inch iMac with a screen flicker issue shared by many on Apple’s discussion boards and around the Internet. Apple addressed these concerns yesterday with a “firmware update”:http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3181?locale=en_US as predicted here in Tech Tails.

If you have a 27-inch iMac with an ATI Radeon HD 4670 or 4850 and a screen flicker issue, select Software Update from your Apple menu and install this update!

Last week and this week, I have dealt with a few situations where I have had to setup backup systems or restore files or entire Macs from backups. I don’t have a story to tell, so I want to use this space to encourage you to make sure you have a proper backup system for your Mac!

If you have a Mac running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard or 10.6 Snow Leopard, you can take advantage of Apple’s Time Machine software with any external drive connected to your Mac, a drive connected to an Airport Extreme, or an Apple Time Capsule (Wi-Fi router with built-in hard drive). I encourage you to get a backup drive larger than your internal drive, since Time Machine is an incremental backup technology, and will store multiple versions of files, not just one.

Check your Time Machine menu item (a clock icon with a counter-clockwise arrow) regularly to make sure you are getting backed up each day. If you are not, make sure you drive is plugged in, turned on, and that you have it selected in Time Machine in your System Preferences.

If you are running Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, or want an additional cloned backup for a newer system, I encourage you to use “SuperDuper,”:http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html a terrific shareware tool for creating an identical clone backup of your system. If you pay the $27.95 shareware fee, you can use the Smart Update feature, where you can have a clone update itself on a regular basis, which is much faster than re-cloning the entire system every time. There are also other tools you can use, including Carbon Copy Cloner, but SuperDuper has the easiest interface.

Don’t lose valuable photos, music, or email. Get backed up, and stay backed up!

Many of us already know of the ancient keyboard shortcut ⌘-Shift-3 to capture your screen to a picture file. It’s been around since System 7, and it’s still with us. We’ve made some significant progress over the years. The ⌘-Shift-3 trick captures a full-resolution image of your screen and places the PNG file on your desktop. From there, you can open and edit the image as you see fit.

It’s rare, though, to need a full screenshot. For these situations, I use ⌘-Shift-4, which turns the mouse pointer to a crosshairs to allow for precision selection of a portion of your screen. I often find myself writing documentation for company procedures and posting the information to our company wiki (powered by “Mac OS X Server”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/74523), and taking screenshots is a very effective way to visually convey knowledge. I love saving the step of cropping in Preview.

⌘-Shift-4 is more powerful than it might seem, though. You can press the key combination and then press the space bar. The mouse pointer changes to a camera, and individual windows and menus are highlighted when you hover over them. Clicking the mouse yields a screen shot of just that window or menu.

The Grab application, found in your Applications folder, allows you to take a timed screenshot by selecting “Timed Screen” from the Capture menu.

These tips can be taken a step further by taking the screenshot and automatically copying it to your clipboard for pasting wherever you’d like. Simple add the Control key to the shortcuts above and you can paste the screenshot directly into any application.

Snow Leopard takes this concept a bit further by allowing you to record video of your actions on screen in QuickTime Player. It records your voice and your screen by default, and it’s my new favorite tool for producing training materials.