Repurposing a Mac mini G4 as an iTunes Server

If you’ve been an avid user of Apple Macs for any length of time, the chances are that you have a PowerPC G4 Mac that pre-dates the Macs with Intel processors. You might also think that these machines are slow and, relatively speaking, useless. That’s not the case.

In this tutorial, I’ll be showing you how to get your G4 Mac up to speed in order that you can use it as an iTunes media server for your household.

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How to Create a World Clock App

Such is the nature of my role that I find myself working not only with colleagues in the United Kingdom, but with those in Australia, Europe and the United States. These multiple timezones could easily hinder the planning of conference calls; I need a way to work out a convenient time for any team to get together on a Skype call.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to create a Dock icon that gives you ready access to the timezones that are important to you — and more besides. Whilst there are menubar applications that do this, in the Mac App Store, my method avoids adding another icon to your (already crowded) menu bar and it does not cost anything.

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Everything You Wanted to Know About Apple ID but Were Too Afraid to Ask

Newcomers to the Mac will be requested to register an email address, and some other details, when they first start up OS X. This email address is often a yourname@mac.com, yourname@me.com or yourname@icloud.com, that can be obtained from Apple specifically for the purpose, or it may be your personal email address such as yourname@yourdomain.tld.

What may not be immediately clear to the new Mac owner, or indeed some existing Mac owners, is why Apple wants you to do this. This article seeks to explain what an Apple ID is and why you need one together with some examples of how an Apple ID can be more useful than you perhaps first considered.

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Advanced VoIP: Making and Receiving Landline Calls on a Mac

In the last article on VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) I looked at how easy it is to set up a normal “land-line” telephone number using a SIP provider together with a fantastic, lightweight app—Telephone—from the Mac App Store.

In this article, I’ll examine the Telephone app. I’ll cover how to customise it, how to improve the quality of calls, how to assert a different geographic presence and how to reduce telephony costs.

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15 Tweaks to Make When Moving to Lion or Mountain Lion

In the last two iterations of OS X — Lion and Mountain Lion — Apple has been making some bold moves in respect to the way the computer operator interacts with the machine. Bold in the sense that the changes are quite a departure to the way in which people have been used to using OS X in the past.

While change can often be positive, some of us take a little time to adapt and are perhaps more resistant to change. This article examines some quick fixes to help you make Lion and/or Mountain Lion a little more familiar.

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Get to Know Your Apple Support Profile

As a Mac owner you’ll be pretty familiar with the concept of an Apple ID. OK, perhaps you’re not entirely familiar with it, but you know that you have one. It’s either a mac.com, me.com or an iCloud.com email address, or perhaps it’s your personal email address.

Whatever you use as your Apple ID, you will have an Apple Support Profile. But what’s that? What does it do, how can it help you and where can it be found? Regardless of whether or not you have taken any AppleCare extra warranty, here’s how the Apple Support Profile will be useful to you.

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How to Clone Raspberry Pi SD Cards Using the Command Line in OS X

The Raspberry Pi runs from an operating system stored on a Secure Digital (SD) card and many different operating systems may be employed. Storage is relatively inexpensive, can be created (flashed), recreated, written to and overwritten with ease.

On the one hand, this is an advantage of the Pi. On the other, the experimental nature of the Pi means more time flashing SD cards. This tutorial shows you how to use a Mac to clone any Raspberry Pi SD card which is particularly useful when you have your OS set up just as you want it.

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A Beginner’s Guide to Game Center on The Mac

Game Center is a social feature that has been an app on the iPad and iPhone since iOS 5. With the advent of games in the Mac App Store, Game Center has now made the transition to Mac and introduced as a new app in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

Game Center is intended to be a service that ties together games and gamers across all devices. It’s a means of discovering new games based on those played by others and it’s a means of competing for achievements and scores against your friends, and even against the rest of the world. 160 million* other gamers can’t be wrong, here’s how to join them…

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Remembering Just One Password is Easier and Safer

In an earlier article, “Picking Passwords: Pitfalls, Practicalities and Protection”, I examined the requirements and problems of modern passwords and why they are hard for humans to remember but easy for computers to crack. I also touched on how we can manage this conundrum.

In this article, I’ll have my cake and eat it; I’ll use complex, secure and unique passwords for everything. All of those passwords will confirm the specific requirements and rulesets of each service – even if that means that the criteria differs between services. And we will remember just one secure password to do this.

Read more at Envato…