So you’re a Mac tech and you regularly encounter hundreds, if not thousands, of Macs. And while these Macs share an operating system, they are often more different than they are alike. Users install the strangest stuff and do mind-bogglingly weird things to their systems, often while attempting to solve a problem themselves. Your job is to fix these neglected, abused, and mucked-up Macs. So, which tools do you use, and what tips or tricks are there to help you overcome the unforeseen problems that are lurking behind the innocent login window? Here’s my setup. You are welcome to copy or modify to fit your particular Mac troubleshooting environment:
Sophos has captured video of a fairly legitimate-looking website that’s nothing more than a front that tries to get you to install a Mac OS X trojan horse. Normally, I wouldn’t highlight the OMG! nature of such a thing, but this is truly newsworthy. Trojan writers are finally targeting Mac OS X, probably because the marketshare has been steadily increasing. It should be noted that this is not a virus and that Mac OS X remains fairly innoculated from the scourge of viruses and worms like Conficker that’s about to make a splash on April 1.
Right, so I’m a Mac guy. I have been a Mac guy for a long time, so long that I can actually remember thinking that System 7.1 was a good update to an operating system. Even back then, Apple was giving us an easy-to-use operating system. Yeah, it wasn’t super stable, but it certainly allowed me to very productive through college. I even spent a few years as a Mac technician supporting Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9. When Mac OS X came along a few years ago, I was actually quite scared. My technical background was not Unix, even though I had toyed around a bit with MUSIC on my school’s mainframe and actually once installed Apple’s AUX on a Quadra 700. I was resistant in the beginning. I didn’t want to see rendered unusable my years of learning the intricacies of Mac OS 9.x troubleshooting. Like most good Mac techs, I had learned the purpose and function of every single extension and control panel. I could troubleshoot preferences files at lightning speed. I knew *all* the Finder keyboard shortcuts. My poor clients watching me troubleshoot or cleanup a Mac OS 9 machine would literally get dizzy trying to follow what I was doing. I’d developed a rigorous optimization routine for the machines I visited. It was a good job, even if Mac OS 9 wasn’t as stable as it could’ve been (had Copland ever seen the light of day, for instance).
But Mac OS X is an entirely different beast. Despite my early reservations, I’ve come to very much love this operating system. I love its inherent stability, its protected memory, its multitasking capabilities. The interface changes a bit with every major OS release, and it’s getting better in stages. According to rumor, Tiger is set to have less of a brushed metal interface and more of a platinum interface, a bit more like Mac OS 9. Just as Panther’s brushed metal was a better interface than the stripes of Jaguar, I believe Tiger’s platinum will be better than Panther’s brushed metal. With luck, Apple will finally give us the option in the OS to change the interfae between the several themes. Microsoft may have picked a Little Tykes Fisher-Price interface as default for WinXP, but they at least allow users to switch to a different interface without installing 3rd-party software. Continue reading »
Apple’s Mighty Mouse is a decent enough mouse, but it’s scroll-wheel nib thing gets gunked up all the time. My users are constantly complaining about the scroll wheel not working…it’ll scroll up but not down and vice versa. The fix is very simple, really:
Hold the Mighty Mouse upside down in your hand and take a piece of copy paper and rub it vigorously against the scroll nib a few times. You’ll probably have to press fairly hard. The gunk that’s blocking the scrolling should dislodge and the paper will collect some of the skin oil and grime that’s on the wheel.
This is nice! GlimmerBlocker is a way for Mac OS X Safari users to block ads without having to rely on a Safari add-on. So when Safari gets updated (which seems to be happening more and more frequently), you won’t need to wait for the add-on to be updated; GlimmerBlocker doesn’t care.
I don’t fanatically hate all web advertising, as some people seem to. What I hate are the obnoxious flashing, rotating, vibrating, sound-playing ads that seem to be taking over the web. They’ve even become a vector for infection on Windows PCs as people are “tricked” into downloading what they think is a free Anti-Virus 08 or 09 software. Not a week goes by when I don’t receive a call from one of my users asking if they really need to download the anti-virus software like they’re being told to by the scam ad. These are the kinds of things I’d love to be able to block for my users.
GlimmerBlocker will let me do this via its use of filters. The community has been posting different filters you can download and use. I’ll likely be writing one specially geared to the educational environment in which I work, and GlimmerBlocker will be making its way into the next round of maintenance installs for my faculty’s MacBooks.
I’m linking to this really just for the sake of coming back to it later. Typically, when I encounter a machine that I need admin access to and the user doesn’t know the password, I just reset the admin’s account password by booting off a Leopard Installer DVD, but here’s an way to add an account to the admin group, during Single-User-Mode boot, which achieves the same purpose.
So you’re a Mac tech and you regularly encounter hundreds, if not thousands, of Macs. And while these Macs share an operating system, they are often more different than they are alike. Users install the strangest stuff and do mind-bogglingly weird things to their systems, often while attempting to solve a problem themselves. Your job is to fix these neglected, abused, and mucked-up Macs. So, which tools do you use, and what tips or tricks are there to help you overcome the unforeseen problems that are lurking behind the innocent login window? Here’s my setup. You are welcome to copy or modify to fit your particular Mac troubleshooting environment:![[Bloglines]](http://appletechnician.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/bloglines.png)
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Sophos has 
OCTOBER 17, 2004:
This is nice!