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September 23, 2009 | Filed Under Tech | Leave a Comment 

Look up any stored password, and then some

We need to connect a PC laptop to our wireless router.  The computer can find the network, but I don’t know the password. Where should I look?

Your Mac does a very cool thing with passwords: It stores them in a single file called the “keychain,” which is locked with the password that you use to log into your Mac. 

Here’s that paragraph in slightly more geeky terms: The keychain is locked with military-grade encryption, typically with the password assigned to your user account. Each user gets their own keychain, and the default keychain name is “login,” though you can rename it or create multiple keychains. Whenever you see a checkbox option for “Remember password in keychain,” or when Safari asks whether you want it to remember a particular password, that login will get stored in the keychain. (If Safari never presents you with that option, go to Safari > Preferences > AutoFill, and turn on “User names and passwords.”)

You can find passwords in your keychain using the Keychain Access utility, which you can find, along with everything else on your Mac, through Spotlight, or by going to Macintosh HD/Applications/Utilities.

Here’s a good tutorial with screenshots on using Keychain Access. And here are Apple’s instructions:



To display your passwords in Keychain Access:

  1. Open Keychain Access, located in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder.

    Open Keychain Access

    • Select a keychain.

    • Click Passwords in the category list.

      Use the Passwords category disclosure triangle to reveal the types of passwords, and then choose a password type.

    • Double-click a keychain item.

    • Select the “Show password” checkbox.

    • Enter your keychain password.

    • To display your password, click Allow. [Editor's note: don't choose Always Allow, or Keychain Access will always diplay that password without entering your master password.]

      • It’s worth mentioning here that sometimes we encounter problems with the keychain, usually having some application keep asking for the password. This post on the Apple Discussion boards runs through some techniques to address those issues, but the first step is to go to the Keychain Access menu (top left, up by the Apple), and click on Keychain First Aid. Enter your keychain password, and click Repair. If it finds any errors, click Repair one more time. If the errors are intractable, refer to the post on Apple Discussions.

      For Your Eyes Only

      Now, one feature of Keychain Access that’s frequently overlooked is Secure Notes. Too often, we’ll run into someone who has put private information someplace way too public, say the address book, or in Stickies. I try not to let abject horror that I’m feeling show on my face, but I pretty quickly move into a discussion of how to protect your computer and phone from unwanted eyes — turning off automatic login, and setting a passcode lock on the iPhone, at the very least.

      Of course, I prefer to keep such data digitally, and passcode-protected, rather than have someone scrawl their passwords on a piece of paper. That’s where Secure Notes comes in. Apple’s instructions:

      1. Open Keychain Access, located in /Applications/Utilities.
      2. Click Show Keychains if the Keychains list is not open, then select the keychain you want to use (if your keychain is locked, click the lock icon then enter your keychain password to unlock it).
      3. Choose File > New Secure Note Item.
      4. Type a name for the note that will help you remember what it is.
      5. Type the information you want to preserve in the Note box, or paste text you’ve copied or cut from another document.
      6. Click Add.
      Is there another way?

      You bet. I recently started using the awesome app 1Password — $39.95 from Agile Web Solutions — and I’m thoroughly impressed with it. These are the distinctions Agile makes between their program and the Mac keychain scheme:

    • Store and provide easy access to more than one account for any website.
    • Correctly handle financial websites which often disable storing passwords in Safari’s AutoFill.
    • Integrate with multiple browsers, including Safari, Fluid, Firefox, DEVONagent, OmniWeb, NetNewsWire, Flock, Netscape Navigator, and Camino.
    • Eliminate the need to synchronize your data between browsers.
    • Support multiple identities, such as personal and business identities. You can even create fake identities for websites you do not trust.
    • Fill credit card information with one click.
    • Import information from a multitude of sources.
    • Integrate a strong password generator directly into the browser for quick and painless generation of super strong passwords.
    • Sync your information to the iPhone/iPod touch, as well as Palm devices.

      • That iPhone sync is great, because I use a different password for almost every service, so in the unlikely event someone tried to torture my passwords out of me, they’ll never get them all. Bwaaa-ha-ha-[cough-cough]!

      The sync with Firefox is also stellar. I kinda like that Firefox has its own password-storage system, just because it maintains their cross-platform paradigm, but I definitely do not like that they don’t have it protected with a master password by default, unless you turn it on: Firefox > Preferences > Security > “Use a master password”:

      1Password installs useful plug-ins all over the place. You get a button in the Firefox toolbar, several menu items in Safari’s Edit menu and Firefox’s View menu, and a contextual menu item in Safari and Firefox (and others, I’m sure). I just entered my credit cards as “Wallet Items,” so my browsers can fill in that info quickly without my dragging leather outta my pocket. (Did that come out wrong?)

      Check out this short video for more info.

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      September 22, 2009 | Filed Under Tech | Leave a Comment 

      10.6.1 seems to fix the VNC screen-sharing delay

      It’s a little thing, but with a fresh install of Snow Leopard, every time I tried to share another computer’s screen with VNC, either with Apple Remote Desktop or my fave client JollysFastVNC, there was a delay of a couple of seconds. Since I upgraded to 10.6.1, the connection is speedy as all get-out.

      Posted via email from J2 Tech Blog

      September 22, 2009 | Filed Under Tech | 2 Comments 

      Flash cookies? What’ll they think of next?

      Thanks to Cliff for the heads-up on this nonsense. Guess Apple was right not to put Flash on the iPhone. 


      http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/flash_cookies_the_newest_secret_way_to_invade_your_privacy/

      Ridiculous. I almost don’t believe it. I hope they turn this off (can one call it a feature?) in future versions. 

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      September 18, 2009 | Filed Under Tech | Leave a Comment 

      When your Mac is really screwed up

      Facebook msg, Subj: : ( 
      Suddenly there’s a 2″ thick (nearly opaque) white bar running down the center of my iMac screen. It’s distressing me. And of course my AppleCare Protection Plan recently expired. : (  What do you charge for a diagnostic look-see?  Or is this one of those problems that can’t be fixed?  

      I hate to say that’s almost certainly a hardware issue. The first step is to take it into the Genius Bar for their free diagnostics. (Make a reservation here for the North Star store.) Be prepared to leave it for a while, as they have fairly deep diagnostics that they can leave running, possibly even overnight in the case of hard-to-find RAM problems. 

      They’ll be able to tell you what’s up, and they may actually have a reasonable fee to repair. If not, they’ll probably tell you to take it to MacTLC. They will do a fine job, though if it’s a logic board replacement, you would need to be ready to a fairly hefty fee. You can find cheaper repairs on the internet – google “MacBook repair” for some examples — but you may not want to ship a desktop. What model do you have?

      I have an Intel iMac, which I purchased in May 2006.  Thanks so much for all your advice, J. I didn’t realize that I could take my computer into the Genius Bar for free diagnostics. I was already resigned to having to take it into a local shop for a $55 look. 

      My pleasure. I have only just recently heard that Apple sometimes charges a flat, fairly low rate to fix out-of-warranty machines, so it might not be that painful. If you would post a reply on my blog or on Facebook as to what they tell you, I’d be much obliged.

      Meanwhile, tell me: do you have a good, solid, daily backup for your iMac? If not, then, while you’re at the Apple Store (you need to make a reservation online), please pick up a LaCie Quadra 500GB or a G-Tech. Here are my typical suggestions for backup software, if you don’t yet have Time Machine in Leopard or Snow Leopard. 

      It’s worth iterating my post about the expectable life span of your Mac:

      After 3 years, you should have a new computer in your budget. After four years, be ready and willing to lay down some jack for a Mac. After five years, your Mac is past its prime, and will not be up to whatever awesome software Apple and other developer/magicians will have concocted.

      Keep me posted!

      Posted via email from j2mac’s posterous

      September 18, 2009 | Filed Under Tech | Leave a Comment 

      What’s a good media server these days?

      This may seem facile for me to say, but for just a little more, you can have a Mac mini media server that doesn’t run on the dippy Windows Hone anything, which is almost guaranteed to be stunted and annoying. The mini solution is versatile and powerful.

      That said, Western Digital makes a very cool network adapter-cum-media player for USB drives, to turn nearly any mass-storage device into a media server, with HDMI. I wanna try it out on a Drobo sometime.

      Finally, I can see that, in the not-too-distant future, some Core 2 Duo Macs will start needing to be retired as primary workstations, and I would anticipate some of them being ready for repurposing as media servers. Similarly, one could buy a used machine for that purpose. 

      The right form factor and cost for this idea is really the Apple TV, which is such a sad and crippled piece of hardware, I stopped recommending it a while back. I’m hoping the recent price drop signals inventory clearance, for a proper model to arrive before the shopping season. 

      Posted via email from j2mac’s posterous

      September 16, 2009 | Filed Under Tech | Leave a Comment 

      Army of Darkness soundboard app

      I didn’t know what a “soundboard” is until I saw news of the free Army of Darkness soundboard app for the iPhone. Now I know. This movie has the best quotable quotes. 

      Posted via email from j2mac’s posterous

      September 16, 2009 | Filed Under Tech | Leave a Comment 

      Quick one about Disk Utility

      Important to understand that “Repair Disk” and  ”Repair Disk Permissions” are entirely different procedures. The former is about file corruption, which can ultimately put your data at risk, the latter about what processes & users have access to a file or folder, a problem with which might affect the performance or functionality of an app or the OS.

      Posted via email from j2mac’s posterous

      September 12, 2009 | Filed Under Tech | 2 Comments 

      Is Facebook Lite the saving grace? http://lite.facebook.com

      Yeah, they misspelled it, and I hate that.
      And yeah, their navigation still blows.
      And oh, I just found that you can’t search for fan pages in Lite.
      And most of the “Settings” panes are disabled.

       But a mostly clean, and definitely snappy, interface makes me hope that FB isn’t losing sight of what made everyone crown them over MySpace.

      Posted via email from j2mac’s posterous

      September 11, 2009 | Filed Under Tech | 1 Comment 

      iPhone OS 3.1 kills tethering hack dead | iPhone Atlas – CNET Reviews

      When Apple released its highly anticipated iPhone OS 3.1 firmware update for the iPhone and iPod Touch, some users’ worries were confirmed: the tethering hack we blogged about in June no longer works.

      After upgrading, if you navigate on your iPhone to the Settings app, select General, then Network, you will see that the menu item for tethering has vanished.

      Developers have not yet been able to find a way to downgrade or re-enable the tethering hack. If you or someone you know has had a different experience, we would like to hear about it in the comments.

      Updated on 9/10/2009 at 10:15 AM PDT: According to user comments below, tethering remains intact for some, but not for others. Varying versions of the AT&T carrier file seem to be responsible for the discrepancy. We’ll be seeking comment today from AT&T and Apple regarding these carrier files.

      via reviews.cnet.com

      Now, I would never, ever try anything that would violate my terms of service with AT&T. They’re so good and benevolent, and their customer service is so knowledgeable and responsive, and they’ve never done anything to make me wish Apple had been able to choose another provider… But if you were to try this tethering hack, be warned it might break your visual voicemail.

      Oh, yeah: F*** AT&T.

      Posted via web from j2mac’s posterous

      September 11, 2009 | Filed Under Tech | Leave a Comment 

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