When putting a MacBook in a bag, always put it black stripe up. The fans (and only ventilation) are situated in the hinge behind the black stripe. If your machine is hot, and you put black stripe down you are either forcing all the heat through the machine (if the fans have turned off) or are essentially blowing hot air over your screen, which can cause shadows on the lower edge of the screen.

If you put your computer in the bag black stripe up, the heat can naturally escape without coming in contact with components, thus reducing the wear and tear on your Mac.

Now if only Apple would put a sleep indicator on the back side…

Despite no event, nor any rumors hinting at the announcement, Mountain Lion has made its appearance. That’s not to say that it is available for the public. It isn’t.

It is available for developers to test their software on. This also enables your system administrators to learn the nuances of deploying the new OS before it is released, which then shrinks the gap between release and deployment to your business’ Macs. This is incredibly important due to the second thing that Apple announced today.

OS X will be updated annually.

Is your IT ready for replacing your OS every 12 months? Is it time to Evolve your IT?

My friend Brett Trout says it better than I can here.

Call your representatives. This bill cannot pass.

In the event that you have one of the white ended MagSafe adapter that is frayed, here is the link to the support document for the settlement. Fortunately, the Apple Store has been pretty good about replacing these for free prior to the settlement, so I don’t believe that I have any that qualify.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4127

Open Terminal.app. Paste this in and hit return.

defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LoginwindowLaunchesRelaunchApps -bool false

Recently, I blogged about the danger of sending large files via email for iowabiz.com. Almost simultaneously, one of my clients asked me for a solution to easily copy and paste a file path from the Finder in Mac OS X Lion. This allows them to discuss shared files via email without the need to actually attach the file.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a solution built-in to Mac OS X. There’s a couple shareware products out that do it, but I felt it was too simple of a problem to pay per computer to solve. Instead, I created a simple Automator script that allows the user to do so via the services menu in the Finder.

Download: Copy URL of item(s)

• To install it, open the zip file and double-click on it. Automator will ask if you want to install it. Do so.
• To use it, right-click on a file or folder, go to the Services menu, and choose “Copy URL of item(s)”. It will place the URL in the clipboard.
• The URL is a file:// style, which means that the recipient will need to have any servers mounted before they click on the link. Hopefully, I can figure out how to get the server address and connection protocol, so that I can fix that in a later version.

There is also no warranty of anything. If you like it, send a couple bucks my way via Dwolla.

I’m going to keep this one short, not because I don’t have a wealth of things to say about it, but rather my friend, colleague, and mentor Ben Milne has said it better.

ThincIowa is only a week away. Get a ticket. It’s the best $200 you’ll spend in October.

If you need any more reason to go, they have a nice page to convince you here.

So a colleague and I had a private twitter conversation this evening regarding his inability to install iOS 5. He received the following message at the onset of the update process: “There was a problem downloading the software for the iPhone ‘Friend’s Phone’. The requested resource was not found.”

We went through several steps, as I didn’t have the same experience as he did.

• Could he restore? No.
• Was he going through a USB hub? No.
• Was he using the latest version of iTunes (10.5)? No.

While I was at Great Ape Trust of Iowa, I had built an XSan installation that I used to host user home directories off of. This wasn’t a very standard configuration, albeit one that was marketed and supported by Apple.

As is customary, I will wait to install a new operating system until at least one point release is distributed. This was the case with 10.5.1 client and server, which I installed one night in early 2008. I installed it, then went home and to bed.

The next morning, all hell breaks loose.

At some point during the morning, a particular user logs in, and all of the files on the server disappear.

I reboot the server, and the files are back. Then they disappear again. Reboot, and they’re back. Up, down, up, down.

I revert the server to a backup of the previous version, and then start a series of long nights trying to figure out why I couldn’t keep things stable.

At one point, I send a 2 AM rant to sjobs@apple.com, saying that with all the hell 10.5 has put me through regarding XSan, the least they could do is make iCal server not suck in 10.6.

The next day, I get a call.. “Hello, my name is so-and-so from Apple Executive Relations, we understand that you are having a problem with your XSan. I’m going to get you in touch with the XSan engineers to assist with the problem.”

It turns out that there is a bug in the server software that was only reliably triggered by my configuration. Once I found the parameters, and relayed them to the engineer, they were able to duplicate the bug in their test installation, and they sent me a patch to test. That patch was then included in 10.5.2.

The second time that I emailed Steve, I was consulting, and had a client with a rather nasty problem with their iMac that I had convinced them to buy. This problem was a bug that caused the computer to be in a state that would only be repairable by replacing the logic board.

A software bug that caused a hardware bug.

Six months after the warranty ran out.

Anyhow, I emailed Steve, letting him know that not only was this a documented bug, that the machine was six months out of warranty, but that the client I convinced to buy it had sworn off of Apple products forever after he had spent quite a bit of money outfitting his office with Apple III’s, which were expensive, error prone, and Apple stopped supporting prematurely.

A few days later, I get a call…

Hello, my name is so-and-so, and I’m from Apple Executive Relations. I understand you have a client with a problem iMac. We’d like to get that resolved for them. Can you provide a serial number and I’ll authorize a free out of warranty repair…