Cleaning Fans on your MacBook
Last week we updated the RAM in our computer to make a MacBook faster. While we had the back cover off, we decided to clean out it’s fans. After about 1.5 years of continuous use there was a little bit of dust in the fan, and inside the inclosure. This can be removed easily with a vacuum cleaner, just make sure you don’t put it right on the components.
Clean the MacBook Fan
Our big tip here is to use the vacuum cleaner on the fan, if you put the hose over the intake part it will cause the fan blades to rotate in their normal direction and won’t damage the fan. Also use a dry cloth to remove any fine dust particles from the cover or other parts of the computer.
Dust gathers in fans
The problem with dust is that will accumulate over time, and once it starts gathering it will accelerate and after a few years it will look like this. You may even have hairs, and dirt stuck to the dust. This picture was taken after 5 years of use of a laptop. Here the fan’s output of hot air was completely blocked by the dust ! 
Dangers with dusty fans
Dust, as it collects will reduce the efficiency of your fan, and may even cause it to stop working completely. When it’s stopped your computer is at risk of overheating and damaging important components. Your CPU, Graphics card & motherboard have a specific range of temperatures that they can safely operate. Once the overheat the systems temperature monitors will tell the system to shut itself down to avoid further damage. If think you computer is over heating you can check the temperatures via special programs or dashboard gadgets like iStat Pro, pictured above.
iOS 5.1.1 released
We just got the news that iOS version 5.1.1 has been released. No news on the major changes yet, but we will keep you posted.
This update contains improvements and bug fixes, including:
• Improves reliability of using HDR option for photos taken using the Lock Screen shortcut
• Addresses bugs that could prevent the new iPad from switching between 2G and 3G networks
• Fixes bugs that affected AirPlay video playback in some circumstances
• Improved reliability for syncing Safari bookmarks and Reading List
• Fixes an issue where ‘Unable to purchase’ alert could be displayed after successful purchaseFor information on the security content of this update, please visit this website:
iOS 6 with Maps
Will Apple release their own flavor of Maps to replace their Google Maps implementation ? We think that this will be one of the key features in iOS6, and it’s been a long time coming.
Read the rest : - iOS 6 with Maps
Mexican Food App
To celebrate Cinco de Mayo we have put together a few iPhone / iPad apps to help you celebrate the day. These apps will help you decide what to cook today, and even how to celebrate in real Mexican style
- iBook : The 50 Best Mexican Recipes
- iPhone : Cinco De Mayo for iPhone
- iPhone / iPad : 190 Mexican Recipes
- Music : Mexican Radio player for iOS
Fun Fact
Did you know that Cinco de Mayo is known as El Día de la Batalla de Puebla in Mexico ? it means The Day of the Battle of Puebla in English. Just remember that it’s not about Mexican independance day, that’s on September 16th. That’s called Grito de Dolores.
Apple supports 10 new languages
News and Announcements for Apple DevelopersNow you have more ways to reach millions of users around the world. We have expanded language support in iTunes Connect, so you can localize app metadata, keywords, and screenshots in 10 new languages: Traditional Chinese, Norwegian, Turkish, Finnish, Danish, Indonesian, Malay, Thai, Vietnamese, and Greek.
Some great news from Apple, is that soon they will be supporting more languages on iOS ! Now developers will be able to translate their apps and descriptions into 25 languages now that they’ve added ten new languages above.
Speeding up a slow MacBook Pro
It’s natural that a computer over time will start to slow down. If you think of it you now have a whole host of new programs on it, your hard-disk is fuller and perhaps you’ve changed a few system settings. There are a few ways that you can insure that your Mac is running as fast as it should be.
Making your Mac run faster
You can try the following ideas here
- Free up some space on your Hard drive by either deleting programs or files you no longer need for or backing up files to an external hard disk or cloud space
- Add some RAM
We went for the latter choice here, and we updated our RAM. We first tested our system to see how much RAM it had and how much it can hold, we used a tool from Crucial http://www.crucial.com/systemscanner.
Here’s a picture of the RAM in the back of our MacBook Pro. We followed the instructions in the video below and it was all done in less than five minutes.
We bought our RAM on Amazon.
Video on how to replace RAM
Ten Top Mac Blogs
1. Macworld: Our number one for news for everything Mac & Apple. We like the way that they have the categories nicely separated, so if you are only looking for reviews you can quickly find them here.
Post frequency : Multiple times a hour
2. The Unofficial Apple Weblog: Also referred to TUAW on the net. TUAW has many authors who write about the latest news in Apple. Some of my favorite posts are about the latest patents filed by Apple. TUAW also has a in-depth tutorials in their How To section.
Post frequency : Multiple times a day
3. TheAppleBlog: This site has been online for a long time, it’s oldest post goes back to 2004 ! They boast 1/2 million plus reader each month, and provide an apple forum which has a vibrant community behind it.
Post frequency : Multiple times a day
4. Download Squad: This is now owned by AOL, and is located at switched.com. These guys offer reviews, and what we particularly like is they have tips too.
Post frequency : Multiple times a day
5. The Apple Core: This ZDNet is a massive blog network, and often has some of the best information out there. They cover rumors as well as news, and their reviews are pretty in-depth.
Post frequency : Multiple times a day
8. Reddit: No need to register to read the numerous posts here. A user led news voting system, where people share their stories and their peers vote on them based on merit. This is coupled in that the quicker a news article gets votes, the higher it will appear on their page.
Post frequency : Multiple times a day
9. MavReview.net: A smaller blog with reviews & updates about Apple products. They often cover some of the new smaller apps before they get main stream coverage.
Post frequency : Every other day
10. MacTrast.com: A busy Mac blog, that has a big twitter following. They cover the news as it happens throughout the day.
Post frequency : Multiple times a day
If you have a new Mac, and want to learn about your new computer, we recommend you start reading these blogs.
iCloud reminder
Here is a screenshot from our iPod touch. Apple are great at pushing reminding you to use their services. We are not sure if this is a good thing or not, but nevertheless, Apple are doing it. We don’t use out iPod touch for anything that much, so it’s not so important, but we do wonder how effective these types of time based reminders are.
We also were a little surprised that backups will only happen when the device is locked. Which I guess is smart, but if you only turn your iPod on to use it for music every now and again, you won’t get the chance to have it in such a state.
iCloud Backup Questions
- Would you be motivated to backup your phone / iPad or iPod ?
- Do you use iCloud to backup your system or do you save it to your computers hard disk ?
- Have you bought extra iCloud storage space ?
Anyway we better go away and back up the system …. because Apple said so.