Ok, so if like me you thought Lion 10.7 was a good idea and decided to upgrade only to find everything horrendously slow and unusable? Photoshop is a complete dog! I have a few tricks that may give the power back to your system.

1) ZAP PRAM http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379
2) RESET SMC http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964
3) Turn off Safari extensions
4) Repair permissions in the Disk Utility App
5) Reboot, hold down “Alt” select “Recovery Disk”, then “Disk Utility” and repair the HD volume by clicking “Repair Disk”. Then do a “Repair Permissions” again while in this recovery mode. Quit and reboot by selecting your drive as normal. Wait for Spotlight to finish a new index before opening any Apps.

Maybe do this, I didn’t need to:
6) Delete glyph fonts you don’t need. Google “Lion problem fonts”
7) Update Microsoft Office 2008, or delete it.

And hopefully you’ll be whizzing around in no time.

Using Time Machine is a breeze – it’s backs up everything mac perfectly. But if you use dropbox you’re probably noticing your hard disk is rapidly filling on it’s own volition even though you exclude this from the Time Machine backup. (my dropbox weighs in at 30GB)

Even after doing this exclusion via the Time Machine System Pane it will still backup a hidden Dropbox cache database that increases with every dropbox change you make. This cache includes all those files you ‘thought’ you deleted and consquently Time Machine will backup huge files every hour. My hidden cache is an unnecessary 1.5GB, which was backed up every hour!

It’s kept hidden in your user folder <your home folder>/Dropbox/.dropbox.cache

How to exclude the hidden folder
Do this by using the “options” button in the  Time Machine system preference pane.
1 – Click the add icon
2 – Check the ‘show invisible files’ checkbox
3 – Select the “.dropbox” folder in your home folder
4 – Confim by clicking Exclude

And you’ll notice backups taking less time straight away. Mine dropped from 1.5GB to 46MB.

View hidden files in the future by reading this post.

So my Apple Mighty Mouse completely broke last week. Which meant only one thing, adoption of a new Apple Magic Mouse. First impressions we ok but then the accidental input annoyances started to happen when using Photoshop. The canvas would slide all around the screen as if I were painting on a runaway train. This was all down to my ring finger balancing on the right-hand side of the touch sensitive area.

Many articles suggest holding the edge instead, but it’s way too sharp to make it comfortable. Then I discovered this little third-party system preference pane called “MagicPrefs” You are able to configure your Magic Mouse to your hearts content. Four finger taps, clicks and swipes all allow for a different action.

I however, opted for removing the sensitive area from my ring finger resting place and adding a dashboard open on Apple logo tap. The mouse is back and I’m once again on the smooth express.

So I accidentally dropped a .htaccess files on my desktop and it instantly dissappeared, very annoying as any (dot)files become hidden on the Finder. After a Google search I came across this problem solver.

If you open up terminal (Applications > Utilities) and type the following lines, one at a time:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder

Once you’ve deleted the files you’re looking for, hide them again.

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
killall Finder

After some considerable research on the iPhone tariffs, mac forums and UK carriers I have concluded which deal is best for my circumstances.

I am currently on the O2 Simplicity SIM (1month rolling) for £20, which includes 300 mins, unlimited texts and unlimited data. Picture messages are charged at 20p each. And 0845 calls are charged at 35p per minute.

This plan works for me but was only meant to be an interim solution until the new iPhone 4 was launched. However, with many providers (including O2 and Vodafone) putting caps on data allowance of 500mb and 1GB respectively you may end up paying extra for your data use each month. For example, I consider myself a heavy data user by streaming radio, using maps and surfing over 3G, often pegging over 1GB per month – not that it matters while I’m on a ‘unlimited data’ package.

So basically get one of these Simplicity deals before O2 replace them – I’d advise before 24th June 2010. O2 are offering my current Simplicity ‘iPhone’ SIM for £5 off each month if you sign for 12 months. So that’s 300mins, unlimited texts, unlimited data, all for £15 per month.

What more, if you’re new to O2 Simplicity, currently get £25 from Quidco. This changes from promotion to promotion – when I signed to Simplicity, O2 paid £70 Quidco for the pleasure.

Now the new iPhone uses MicroSIMs, it looks like O2 will swap your current SIM over (maybe for a fee), or alternativly you can cut your current one with a pair of sharp scissors or scalpel.

One more thing – once you sign to this you still need the new iPhone 4 – that’s the bad news – it’s £499.00 for the 16GB or £599 for the 32GB.

Now you have to just have to decide if it’s black or white??

‘The demos here show how the latest version of Apple’s Safari web browser, new Macs, and new Apple mobile devices all support the capabilities of HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. Not all browsers offer this support. But soon other modern browsers will take advantage of these same web standards — and the amazing things they enable web designers to do.’

Have a look around for yourself here

Do you ever get annoyed that your music in your iTunes library has an old broken link? Well this little AppleScript will search your iTunes library and delete any of the alias’ that don’t have a music file attached to it.

Nice and simple.

1 – Open Apple Script Editor (start typing AppleScript into spotlight)

2 – Copy and paste the below code into your new window and click Run

3 – Save the script for using again in the future

tell application “iTunes”

set thePlaylist to library playlist 1
set musicFiles to the file tracks of thePlaylist

repeat with mf in musicFiles
--the name of mf as string
set hasLoc to ""
if (the location of mf as string ¬
is equal to "missing value") then
try
set comment of mf to the comment of mf & ""
on error number errNum
delete mf
end try

end if
end repeat
end tell

Designers Toolbox has a useful set of iPhone Interface elements for you to design your application with.

Download the PSD now

Freehand Icon to match your new CS4 range of apps. Download here