Screen Sharing via iChat (Leopard)

iChat may not be the quickest way to make a screen sharing connection, but it's the best. What's especially cool about it is: (a) you don't need to know the person's IP address to make a connection; (b) you can instantly shift back and forth between having your screen or the other person's screen fill up your display; and (c) you can copy files from one computer to the other by dragging and dropping files from one screen to the other (when you do this, the transferred files wind up in Leopard's new Downloads folder).

To use this screen sharing variation, both machines must being running Leopard and have iChat open. Also, make sure Screen Sharing Enabled is checked in iChat's Video menu. Here's what to do next:

1. If you and the other person are both on the same local network, find the other person in iChat's Bonjour List.
   
   For a remote connection, you'll both need to be logged into an iChat-compatible account. You should ideally have the other person's name in your Buddy List.
   
   
2. Select the other person's name from the relevant list.
   
   Either (a) go to the Buddies menu and choose "Ask to Share (person's name)'s Screen..." or (b) select the same command from the pop-up menu accessed from the Screen Sharing icon the bottom of the List window, as seen in Figure 1.
   
   
3. A message pops up on the screen of the other computer, asking for the person's permission for you to share their screen. Presumably they are expecting this and will click to Accept.

Figure 1. The command to request to access someone else's screen via iChat (in this case, both connected computers had my name).

Assuming nothing goes wrong, you should see the other person's screen on your Mac in short order. A large text message appears across the screen on the shared computer, notifying the user that the computer is now being shared.

To end a screen sharing session, type Command-Escape from either computer. Or, from the computer that is accessing the shared screen, click the X icon in the upper left of the currently smaller window.

Troubleshooting tip: When attempting to connect via screen sharing in iChat, you may get a "communication error" message. Assuming that all settings are correct and you have a viable Internet connection, restarting one or both Macs should fix the problem. If it doesn't, you may instead use the Finder screen sharing method, especially for a local connection. It can work even when the iChat method does not.

Time Machine

Leopard's dead-simple backup utility, Time Machine, probably has more people backing up their Mac than ever before precisely because there are so few configuration options. But if you're determined to stretch Time Machine beyond its default behavior, there are two ways to do so:

Customize Time Machine's backup schedule with TimeMachineScheduler. If Time Machine's hourly hard drive spin-up is slowing down your Mac or just seems too frequent to you, customize the schedule using freeware TimeMachineScheduler. TimeMachineScheduler's interval slider lets you set Time Machine's default backup time from 1 hour to up to 12 hours apart.

Enable Airport disk destinations with iTimeMachine. New freeware iTimeMachine lets you set network disks as Time Machine's backup destination—great if you've got other Macs in the house but no FireWire drive. Warning: We haven't tested iTimeMachine's support for network disks, which Apple marks as "unsupported"—so do proceed with caution when it comes to critical data using this software.

On the day you bought your Mac it may have been the fastest machine available. But as time wore on, new revisions took its place and the years took a toll on your once-fast Mac. Aside from spending the money to upgrade your Mac or buy individual components, here is a list of things you can do to speed up your Mac without spending a penny.

There are many ways to do this, and it varies for each model, but there is only so much you can spend on Hardware upgrades before your Mac is unsupported by new Operating System releases. One thing I have learned from using an old Mac is that Tiger is one cat too big. My high school is littered with iMac G3s clocked at 500 MHz. While on paper they support Mac OS X Tiger by meeting the requirements of RAM, Processor, and including a Firewire port, in real world usage these Macs are slow. Of course they’re slow, you’d say, they’re G3s. But my older iMac clocked at 350 MHz and ran Mac OS X Panther purr-fectly. The iMac was snappy and even in some cases faster than my G4 Mac Mini. Tiger is a huge resource hog that slows down your system to index your data, eating up your RAM with Widgets and taking a huge toll on your Mac. I cannot stress this enough: if you have an old Mac, do not upgrade to Tiger, or if you have it installed, downgrade to Jaguar. Sometimes a downgrade can be an upgrade.

Going the software route to speed up your Mac, there are many simple things that can be done. First off you need to hire an interior designer, a very boring interior designer. Yes I said that right, your Mac isn’t fast enough to run all those flashy effects or all the bling bling Apple piled on.

First, change your Wallpaper immediately. Replace with a solid color, like the default solid colors already installed in the Desktops menu. I am a big fan of Solid Dark Aqua myself, although Kelp Green is somewhat appealing also. The reason changing your wallpaper to a solid color speeds up your Mac is because when a window is redrawn, all that needs to be drawn is the color itself, not the complex parts of other wallpapers.

Once your Wallpaper is changed, you’ll want to see it as much as possible, right? Well, if you are a very messy person (aren’t we all) and you have files strewn all over your desktop, then it would be helpful to move all of them to one of a few folders. This goes hand in hand with the previous tip: less folders, less that needs to be drawn when moving Windows.

Then there is the Dock, your central hub for app launching and access to files and folders. The useless effects of the Dock are fun, but once again we are going for squeezing out every ounce of speed. Disable Dock magnification in the Dock preference pane under system preferences if you have not already. Also disable “Animate opening Applications” in the same preference pane. Instead of that bouncing App you’ll get a stationary one with a glowing triangle underneath to indicate that it is launching. One last thing to change for the Dock is to switch from the genie minimize effect to the scale minimize effect; trust me, it’s worked for me.

Login items are great for those lazy to launch your needed apps. As you install more applications they may set login items themselves which will definitely slow down your Mac while loading your user account. Every once in a while, check your login items and keep it bare.

System optimization is essential to a faster Mac. Although Mac OS X does de-fragment your Disk, it will only do it to files that match a certain criteria. Spending the money on a good de-fragment utility will be beneficial in the long run but will be useless if you do not have a lot Disk space taken up. Another way is to run your maintenance tasks regularly. In Mac OS X Tiger, these tasks are scheduled to run at certain times while your machine is on. If it is not run at its scheduled time it will be run right when your Mac turns on. Simply leaving your Mac on for extended periods of time (a day or more) will automatically run these maintenance tasks. If you simply cannot wait to run these tasks, download a utility that will do it for you