The reason behind that is because I have often found that restoring a backup causes random spikes in battery usage and app errors. However, there have been cases where I require my text messages or other data from my iOS device and I have been looking for a solution to backup only specific parts of it.

The easiest and fastest application that I could find to perform those tasks reliably is DigiDNA’s Diskaid.

Additionally, it provides you with a series of very useful information which iTunes tends to make difficult to gather. DiskAid will allow you to copy data from and to your iOS device i.e. Messages, Contacts, Call History, Notes etc. and you can then fine grain your restore process or even archive your thousands of text messages to your computer to reduce clutter on your iOS device.

We’re looking forward to seeing everyone tomorrow (21st May) at the Mac Meetup. We’ll be in the upstairs function room from 6pm in The Crown and Two Chairmen:

The address is:
31-32 Dean St London W1D 3SB

If you haven’t been before and you are wondering what the evening is… Simply, it’s a chance for Mac and IT professionals to get together and have a chat, away from the computer, over a couple of beers or two.

It’s a great opportunity to meet like-minded professionals and a few our Amsys team members will also be around if you have a couple of ideas you want to bounce off of us!

We make the promise that there will be no sales, pitches or presentations and the evening is a relaxed, informal affair!

If you are on Linkedin, please join our Mac Meetup Linkedin group to stay up to date about future events, or you can register via the Mac Meetup page on the website.

See you then!

Now Dashboard can be useful, but I understand that there is the need to disable this perhaps within a managed working environment.

Luckily, the good old command line has an answer to this!

So, all you have to do to completely disable the Dashboard in OS X, is open the Terminal Application from /Applications/Utilities and enter the following command:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean true && killall Dock

Bingo! The older keyboard’s F4 Dashboard key, the Dashboard Application or the 4-finger swipe on a Multi-touch or Magic Trackpad no longer function and Dashboard cannot be opened!

If you do want to revert back to the default setting and enable Dashboard again, just enter the following command:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean false && killall Dock

Disclaimer:

While the author has taken care to provide our readers with accurate information, please use your discretion before acting upon information based on the blog post. Amsys will not compensate you in any way whatsoever if you ever happen to suffer a loss/inconvenience/damage because of/while making use of information in this blog.

This feature has been tested using OS X v10.8.3 which was the latest Mac OS release at the time of writing and also using the latest Internal and external Apple keyboards.

They have now added the ability to use, per user Screen Sharing. This means that if your machine has multiple user accounts and is currently being used by someone else, you can simply log in with your account credentials when selecting screen sharing and this will give you the option to either take control of the current User session, or log in to your own users session.

Another new feature, is that they have incorporated a toolbar into the screen sharing application. Below are the options you can add or remove from your toolbar.

The Control Mode is a feature I’m glad that has been included in the new toolbar. The only issue I have is that by default you take control straight away and if you are connecting to a machine that someone is still working on with maybe only the one account, it can freak the user out when the mouse starts moving before you have made them aware.

It is possible to adjust this through the Screen Sharing Preferences. Either start up a screen sharing session or go to, /System/Library/CoreServices and load up the application from there. Load the Application Preferences to adjust the Setting in which, once connected, you always take control to initially observe.

Screen sharing is relatively under used and for most is very much overshadowed by Apple Remote Desktop, but in a company environment where you have just started to integrate Macs then this built in feature will go a long way in easily supporting your users without additional costs.

So, we have decided to offer one lucky person a free training course of their choice… all you have to do is fill in the form below and choose whichever course you would most like to sit. Whether it’s an OS X certified course such as Server Essentials, or an app development course like Objective C for Beginners or Android Development, it really doesn’t matter, the choice is yours!

The winner will be picked at random and notified via email on Monday 20th May at 12pm. We will then send the winner a selection of dates when the course can be taken at either one of our three training centres.

Good luck!

Competition now closed

As usual, with the mac systems, we will be using the launchctl command to unload it but we’re going to use -w to override the disabled key and set it to false:

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui.plist

It worked for me without it, but you may have to run:

 killall NotificationCenter

You can always revert the settings by changing unload to load!

For me it’s not so much about the menu bar space, it’s the constant update notifications from the App Store that drive me nuts.

The OS X Finder’s ‘Go to Folder’ menubar option allows a user to enter the path to any folder in the file system, whether it is visible or not. This can be a dangerous thing if users know what they are looking for!

If you decide that you don’t want users to be able to access the OS X Finder’s ‘Go to Folder’ menubar option as shown below, this can be disabled.

To remove the ‘Go to Folder’ option, all you need to do is enter one line of command in the Terminal application (from /Applications/Utilities/) as shown below :

defaults write com.apple.finder ProhibitGoToFolder -bool true && killall Finder

Notice the ‘Go to Folder’ option is now missing and also the hot keys of ‘SHIFT’ + ‘COMMAND’ + ‘G’ do not work either:

If you do want to revert back to the default setting, just enter the following command:

defaults write com.apple.finder ProhibitGoToFolder -bool false && killall Finder

Disclaimer:

While the author has taken care to provide our readers with accurate information, please use your discretion before acting upon information based on the blog post. Amsys will not compensate you in any way whatsoever if you ever happen to suffer a loss/inconvenience/damage because of/while making use of information in this blog.

This feature has been tested using OS X v10.8.3 which was the latest Mac OS release at the time of writing and also using the latest Internal and external Apple keyboards.

Here at Amsys everyone has an iPhone or equivalent, so we are always looking for innovative ways of using them in our business.

One great example is with our training department.

Our trainers are always busy, so we needed a very quick and easy way for them to be able to check their schedule. We wanted them to be able to see which courses they are scheduled to teach, along with, who is attending that particular course.

So, we have written a simple app that allows them to do just this.

The app connects to a feed produced by our backend systems, in this case FileMaker. From the App the trainer can search for their courses, filter the courses by location or date as well as seeing who is attending the course.

Following on from this version, another task the trainer has to perform is to log which pieces of kit they are using for a particular course. For this we used QR codes as asset tags for the equipment. Each QR code holds the devices serial number, asset number and a description.

We then added QR code scanning capability to the app which allows the trainer to very easily compile a kit list which then gets emailed back to our training administrators.

These sort of internal business apps are reasonably straight forward to create and cost effective.

If you have some ideas for your company and fancy creating an app yourself, then we run a number of courses to help achieve this goal including:

• 2 Day Objective-C course for beginners

• 5 Day Developing apps for iOS 6

Alternatively we have a team of developers waiting to turn your ideas into real apps.

If you need any information please feel free to contact our team on 020 8660 9999 or training@amsys.co.uk

- Mac Integration Basics (9L0-407),
- ACTC 10.7 Re-certification (9L0-517)
- OS X Support Essentials 10.7 (9L0-410)
- OS X Server Essentials 10.7 (9L0-515)

If you are still yet to take the examination required to get your certification, we strongly encourage that you book asap. Please also bare in mind that if you fail the exam you will then have to wait 7 days before being able to retake.

All of the available dates when exams can be taken at our training centres in Central London, South London and Manchester can be found below.

South London Exam Dates

- 9th May – between 10am-3pm
- 10th May – between 10am-3pm
- 13th May – between 10am-3pm
- 14th May – between 10am-3pm
- 17th May at 3pm
- 20th May – between 10am-3pm
- 21st May – between 10am-3pm
- 24th May – 3pm
- 28th May – between 10am-3pm
- 30th May – between 10am-3pm
- 31st May – between 10am-3pm
- 4th June – between 10am-3pm

Central London Exam Dates

- 8th May – between 10am-3pm
- 16th May at 3pm
- 17th May at 3pm
- 24th May at 3pm
- 31st May at 3pm

Manchester Exam Dates

- 28th May – between 10am-3pm
- 29th May – between 10am-3pm
- 3rd June – between 10am-3pm

For more information or to enquire about exam dates, please fill in the form below:

Last year Margaret, a graphic designer from Essex, took the Amsys Objective C for beginners and iPhone SDK workshop course. Following her training, Margaret left feeling that the course had met her objectives and had given her a good understanding of the Objective C language, therefore enabling her to pursue her own app development project.

The App is called “Unibookworm” and seeks to solve the problem with “what to do with your uni books, once your degree has finished.” Many other providers, such as Amazon, take a percentage from each sale, which is something that Margaret wanted to avoid.

After a year in the making, the App was accepted onto the AppStore this weekend and is now available to download now for 69p.

Once UniBookWorm is downloaded, students can enter the book’s details, by using the quick ISBN feature which recognises the number and fills in the details for them (they can add a photo using the camera function).

Students looking for particular books can also search the Unibookworm database by author, subject, ISBN or keyword. The students can then send messages to each other to arrange payment, delivery etc.

Included within the app is a link (by clicking on the Purchase button) for the Barclays Pingit App, which can be downloaded and used for easy payment. You don’t have to have a Barclays account in order to use this facility.

Richard Mallion, author of our iOS app development courses, has downloaded the app and said that, Margaret had “done a fantastic job.”

For more information about our app development courses, click here, or call us on 0208 645 5806 .