mac geekery

RAM disks are useful for very specific situations, especially those that require temporary high-speed disks (web browser caches, for instance). Mac OS 9 had a control panel to instantly create a RAM disk and so people used it for such things. Mac OS X has left us without this. Or has it?

Hard drive dying with the click-of-death? Never made a backup? There might be some help out there for you when it comes to getting data off the drive.

dd_rescue is a little Linux utility that works like dd does but with two crucial differences: when it hits an I/O error it does not stop but rather slows down and reads one block at a time instead. This little utility is priceless for getting data off dying hard drives.

No, this isn’t about using Disk Utility to partition it and break it, this is about partitioning it and keeping the iPod’s functionality intact. Useful for those with 40GB of iPod and 25GB of music…

It goes without saying this is not something Apple intended a music player for, so if you break your toy you’re on your own. Apple’s iPod Firmware Updater program can usually restore the iPod back to its former self but reader beware: you may kill your little friend in the process. You have been warned, and since this is merely an educational guide I will take absolutely no responsibility if this fails to work for you even if you follow the directions perfectly.There's more »

As of 10.3.x the fsck utility supports the -r flag which will reconstruct a disk’s catalog in the way described in MacOS Rumor’s Tiger prediction. So, at least that one is possible.

However, I wouldn’t do it without a backup, and I’ve trashed a case-sensitive disk image (a test image) with this, so I’d only use “traditional” formats with it (HFS+, perhaps with a journal). The HFS+J image I made survived just fine.There's more »

Nothing beats having a dedicated web server apart from your Mac. The Personal Web Sharing feature of OS X may be driven by Apache, but your Mac has features (like Sleep) that make it incompatible with hosting your website... Not to mention that your cable provider generally dislikes you hosting it yourself and, in fact, often directly blocks attempts to do so. But that doesn't mean that Personal Web Sharing is a complete loss. With a few tweaks, your Mac is the perfect test bed for trying out new CMS software and for testing tweaks you're planning for your existing site. There's more »

Welcome to Mac Geekery!

Let’s start things off with what we’re not: we’re not here to educate the masses on how to use their computers. We’re not here to tell people that F12 works like eject for keyboards without it (though, honestly, that is rather cool). We’re here to tell those that already know how to use their Mac how to use it better. We’re here to show you how it works. We’re here to tell you how, when, and why your Mac does what it does.

And you can help, if you like. In addition to a semi-regular staff we’re also taking articles from users. If you think you have something you’d like to write about, please do so. Instructions are in the FAQ.There's more »