Every Friday week we publish a list of inFrequently Answered Questions and answers to help you, the Crazy Apple user, get more out of your Crazy Apple products.

This week, we scrape the bottom of the barrel and dredge up disk utility, the app that 90% of the time only gets used when you think your system is fried.

Q: I have secrets I need to keep.

A: I hear the secrets that you keep–

Q: I don’t talk in my sleep.

A: … Spoilsport.

Q: Aaaaanyway, I have things that need to be kept on the DL. The QT. Under the radar. Under the bridge. Under the boardwalk. Out in the Boondocks ¹. Leaving New York. I forgot what I was talking about.

A: You said you needed to keep secrets before you started quoting song titles.

Q: Riight right. Anyway, I need a way to keep some…things…secure.

A: On your mac.

Q: Yes.

A: You do know that you can encrypt your entire user directory, right?

Q: Yeah, but I don’t want to go that far. I only need some things secured. And they need to be secured even if someone gets into my account. ‘Cause this one time, when I was on rocket-powered skis in the Improbable Mountains outside of Marrakesh…

A: I don’t think I have proper clearance to hear the rest of that. Anyway, Believe it or not, Apple has provided a tool custom-made for people like you.

Q: An incredibly stylish cyanide capsule that fits nicely into a false molar ² ? Retrofitted iSight cameras that also shoot laser beams at unauthorized users? an iPhone app that allows me to not only play my music via bluetooth in my Aston-Martin, but also calls said Aston-Martin to me if I can’t get to it?

A: Umm, kinda like that yeah. Only instead of an improbable and deadly device it’s a way to create an encrypted disk image where you can store your confidential files.

Q: You intrest me strangely, old friend.  How does such a thing work?

A: Well, you know that Macs make great use of disk image files, or “.dmg” files, for things like installers and whatnot? And that a .dmg file is a much easier thing to send over the internet than, say, a CD-ROM?

Q: Yes, I follow you.

A: Well, there’s also an option to encrypt your new .dmg file, so it’s only accessible with a password that you set. You can use 128-bit or 256-bit AES encryption, the same encryption the Americans use for Top-secret documents.

Q: But will  a super-spy be able to crack my password by sitting in  a dark room in front of a screen with green letters scrolling upwards across their face?

A: Only if you’re dumb enough to choose something stylish like “martini” as your password, and only if the hacker is using a Mac.

Q: I like what you say old friend! I shall transfer all those top-secret Soviet plans into an encrypted disk image, set the password to something unguessable like “nomoresecrets”, and finally get the drop on the Reds once and for all!

A: But the USSR… the Soviets… The Berlin Wall… Yeah, alright. Have fun.

Q: So I shall. I’m off!

1. Did you know “boondocks” comes from the Tagalog (Filipino) word “bundok” which means “mountain”? And that it’s the only known Tagalog word to be adopted into English? Well now you do! [↩]
2. Proposed name: the iDie [↩]

• March 15, 2010: People finally get tired of calling the iPad “basically a big iPod Touch”
• March 16, 2010: The wave of iPad-sounds-like-maxi-pad jokes fails to slow down at all, sadly.
• April 7, 2010: iPad app sales outpace the sales of all apps on the Android Marketplace ever.
• April 8, 2010: The ill-conceived ZunePad is announced
• April 9, 2010: In a move that earns the respect of Mafiosos everywhere, Microsoft attempts to whack every journalist who covered the ZunePad launch event, hoping to be able to deny they ever dreamed of such a thing.
• May 21, 2010: Apple announces the code name for OSX 10.7; not in a conference, nor in a webcast, but via email to John Gruber and David Pogue. Industry pundits suspect the new name heralds an overall shift to the new iPad when the name is revealed to be “Some kind of cat or something”
• May 4, 2010: Lazarus Long buys an iPad.
• July 24, 2010: Pro-Windows bloggers are forced to admit that, despite its shortcomings, the iPad “seems to be doing okay” as Apple celebrates the sale of the 10 Millionth unit.
• July 25, 2010: Apple announces the iPad 2nd Gen, with all the features everyone wanted in the 1st Gen for $100 less.
• July 26, 2010: 10 million 1st Gen iPads are available on eBay.
• July 27, 2010: iPad OS 4.0 is released to developers so they can write apps for the new 2nd Gen iPad. 4 million copies of the SDK are downloaded, resulting in 10000 new apps released to the iPad App Store, 5000 rejections, and an estimated 6 Million “Hello World” apps worldwide.
• September 21, 2010: The 2nd Gen iPad is released. People who have been standing in line since July find that they no longer have the ability to walk.
• November 3, 2010: Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Paul Therrott , all dressed in black trench coats with the collars turned up and sporting dark glasses and fedoras, each buy an iPad from the Apple store in cash. A suspicious mall employee presses the silent alarm and the three are apprehended and taken in for questioning. They  found to be perfectly innocent, albeit perfectly innocent owners of iPads. Apple bloggers are unable to breathe for a good twenty minutes after seeing this story on Twitter.
• December 25th, 2010: Millions receive iPads for Christmas. Dozens receive whatever terrible tablet thing HP is pushing, and immediately list them on eBay.
• January 10, 2011: Apple announces a user base of 20 million iPads, and the new iPad 3rd Gen with all the features everybody wanted in the second gen. 20 million iPads are listed on eBay.

No iFAQ this week, sorry. Monday is exactly one year since my sister-in-law died and I can’t think funny right now. Go drop by her site for a moment, if you like.

http://laurasteelmusic.com/

Much has been made of Apple’s new tablet released this morning [Note to self: put name of tablet here after tablet is released, unless you forget], but only a select few reporters were invited back for Apple’s other product unveiling later in the day.  Announcements simply read “Meet us at the Palace Hotel at 5:00″ with the Apple logo underneath.

Members of the press were ushered in to a large ballroom near the bar area. There were chairs, a microphone and a table on one of those portable stage thingies, and that was it. Nervous looks were exchanged. iPhones were consulted, and people re-read the invite, just to be sure.

At 5:15 the lights went down and a guy in ripped jeans and a “Journey” T-shirt came into the room and turned a spot light on the stage, then left. Nothing more happened for five minutes.

At 5:20 Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller , arm in arm, came up onto the stage. Each was holding an aluminum bottle in one hand, and they were swaying slightly. Jony Ive walked in behind them, towing a cart full of crates. As Jobs and Schiller stepped into the spotlight the audience could see a distinctive Apple logo on the bottles.

“Ladish and gentlemenssss… hey, wha happend to all the ladish? Shteve, whurrrr, whurrr the ladies? Coul’ve at least invited Trapani. What’s with all the….awwww, fuggedabodit.” Shiller began, then turned back to his bottle and sat down heavily on a chair on the stage, mumbling to himself. Steve Jobs looked up and took over.

“Gennelmen… I would like to introush you to Applesh newesht product. This is shomething that Phil an’ I have been workin’ on for… for…. foralonglongtime.  Thish!” he said, holding up the bottle to the light, “Thish is… APPLE BEER!”

Only he was able to pronounce the Apple symbol. Very strange.

“Now don’t get ush wrong!” Phil said from his chair, standing up again. “Thish isn’t just som’, som’ beer made from applesh. This ish a completeere….completlish, thish is a whole new thing!” He took a long pull on his bottle again.

“It’sh true! Apple Beer is non-alcoholic! Sho you don’ hafta worry ’bout your liver. Inshtead, it’sh got a shpechisal blend of aneshthetisksks… anishtehetis…. of thngsh that make yer lips numb… AND other thingsh that make your BRAIIIIN numb!” Shteve…sorry, Steve said. He continued, “It’sh made to our most demanding speshifications!  Jony here, he made the bottlesh outta OLD CANS.  They’re recycled! Sho Greenpeashe can jus’ shuddap abouddit already. And the ingrediensh! We got shome of the besht ingreditensh your money will be able to buy! But Jony’sh gunna havta tell ya ’bout ‘em, ‘caush I godda sit down.”

Ive then stepped up to the microphone. “We crafted Apple Beer from the finest Jonagold and Fuji apples to give it it’s unique flavor, and added a carefully selected mix of natural and synthetic ingredients to provide you with all the “good” aspects of normal beer, but without all the downsides… the vomiting, the headaches, and the addiction.  Apple Beer is completely non-addicting, non-alcoholic, and won’t leave you feeling like a cat went to the loo in your head the next morning,” Jony said, holding up a bottle. “Oi! Too right! Ya barmy blokes!”

Actually that last part was Phil Schiller.

“As you can see, however,” Ive continued, “Apple Beer does still lower your inhibitions and allow you a certain degree of freedom of expression that you might otherwise deny yourself.”

“Yesh yesh, thanksh, Jony,” Steve Jobs said, standing back up. “We’re done with you. Go pash out the free shamples. Apple Beer will be available as shoon as we can get groshery stores to shell it. An’ now, Phil an’ I are gonna go get pished.”

Jony then told the crowd that Apple Beer would be priced at $11 for a six-pack, thus putting it just out of John Moltz’s reach.

Moments after Steve Jobs left the stage; iPad launch presentation completed, the Apple Pundit community began pining for the “Mythical” Apple Tablet.

“Yeah, the iPad is nice,” admitted David Pogue, “But before, when we were all waiting for the ‘Apple Tablet’ it had way more features, and they were cooler, too. Now we have a real thing, and we can’t make up new features all willy-nilly. Screen that makes little bumps where the keys on the keyboard are? Gone! Face recognition so your whole family can use it? Gone! It’s just a big ol’ iPod touch.

“I mean, yes, of course I’m going to buy one and write a missing manual for it, but I’m not gonna be happy about it.”

“I could afford the mythical apple tablet,” John Gruber said, holding his torn cardboard sign reading “will be grumpy for food” with one hand so that he could gesture wildly with the other. “It was going to be free, or at least really really cheap. But the iPad, well, it’s all ’sensibly priced’ and stuff. I can’t afford real cash monies! Who am I, that Nate guy who writes CANS? I heard he’s rolling in the dough.”

Not everyone was despondent, however. Walt Mossberg calls the iPad “The best thing ever ever ever,” stating that he “loves it more than my own left ear! It’s perfect and beautiful and everything that was ever good is in that iPad!!!1!!!!”

Slightly more rational correspondents are waiting to “see one in real life” and are withholding judgement until they experience… who am I kidding? There are no rational correspondents in the world of Apple punditry.

And now we’ll leave you with the Steve Jobs Summation: “our most advanced technology in a magical & revolutionary device at an unbelievable price.”

12:34: I just like posting at 12:34.

12:33: Steve Jobs “got the goods” to create a new market out of thin air.

12:31: OSX lovers brace to get ignored for another year while Apple plays with the new OS for this thing

12:28: It’s a whole new gold rush!

12:27: The iPad will change the way we do the things we do be do be do

12:24: Everything is better when Jon Ive says it.

12:23: Keyboard dock turns your tablet back into a laptop.

12:20: Okay the prices are actually reasonable.

12:18: “pundits” said it would be under $1000, which is $999. They’re wrong! It’s $2999!

12:17: Unlocked out of the door? You can use any SIM? Wow, take that, AT&T!

12:15: 3G via AT&T is $30/month for the “Unlimited” (read: limited, but we don’t tell you what the limit is) plan.

12:13: Steve Job’s new catch phrase: “Isn’t it great?”

12:12: Giraffe Graph.

12:11: Numbers moves this into the realm of justifiable business expense.

12:10: Soccer teams are always looking for a way to make attactive graphs of their players’ performance.

12:08: The Numbers presentation slides into a discussion of the American vs. Canadian tax systems.

12:06: All Keynote presentations must be about the great wall of China. Other topics will be allowed in later versions.

12:02: Keynote looks a lot like keynote, only you touch things now. How you connect it to a projector so other people can see your slides is anyone’s guess.

12:01: Phil Just took over Steve’s Chair.

12:00: Phil Schiller comes to tell us about iWork. Good ol’ Phil! Whadda guy!

11:59: Apple’s using an open format for their books? My mind, she is blown. In a good way. That is some happy news.

11:57: BOOKS! BOOKS! BOOKS! thank you.

11:54: Steve graciously nods to Amazon’s Kindle before completely dethroning it.

11:53: Did you hear that? That was the sound of every chess club in america writing an iPad app to track their games.

11:51 MLB.com will give you nerdy stats about baseball games. Trig fans rejoice! All six of you!

11:49: This just in! Car games! Whoda thunk it?

11:47: a quick glance at a painting program and off we go to more game demos from EA games. Order is restored.

11:44: The New York Times is hoping the iPad will save them from the inevitable death of old media. They could be right. Of all the newspapers, they have done the best job of using new technology.

11:42: Wait, only one game demo? What happened Apple?

11:40: Wake me when the game demos are over. Zzzzzzzz….

11:37: Nothing’s as exciting as new SDK’s! I mean, new features? Bah!

11:34: You can run iPhone apps in the middle of the screen and imagine that you have an entire foot of bezel around your iPhone.

11:31: It’s powered by AL GORE’S HAIR! I mean, an “Apple A4″ chip. Don’t know what that’s all about.

11:27: That surfing dog is getting a lot of facetime. He must be a personal friend.

11:23: Dangit, John Mayer got his lizard-like visage into this presentation. Why won’t you leave us alone, you substandard guitarist-slash-crooner?

11:21: Yep, look straight down and type. Your Chiropractor recommends you get an iPad immediately.

11:18: Why do I think all the trekkies are going to call this thing the iPADD?¹

11:16: Steve is sitting comfortably, so the Moody Blues can stop asking, thank you.

11:14: The iPad looks like a giant iPhone. But I’m sure Steve’ll tell us why it’s not any second now. Any second. Any time now.

11:10: “Netbooks have no reason for existing” Take that, ASUS!

11:09: Last post from MacWorld says “Steve Jobs is on the stage” SO ten minutes ago.

11:08: Apple now owns all mobile stuff. They have their hotels on boardwalk and broadway. They rule the world.

11:06: Amazing picture of Woz.

11:02: Big Steve has taken the stage. Many people have taken pictures. 2/3 of the traffic on the internet right now is…well, probably unmentionable, but a LOT of traffic is Steve Jobs pictures going back and forth.

11:01: The time has come, no posts! WHAT IS GOING ON? Oh, wait, new post now.

10:55: Even from a few thousand miles away, I’m excited. Not about Jason Chen’s nose, you understand. About the tablet thingy.

10:54: Jason Chen is picking his nose.

10:53: I will never understand why people have “spoiler-free” versions  of their liveblogs.  What would you say? “Steve Jobs is talking about…a thing. It’s really amazing! It has… some features…wow, you’ll really want to see this, later, when you watch the “official” version”

10:44: Dan Moren should be told that the spawning possibilities at this event are decidedly low. His salmon metaphor is  a bit creepy.

10:43: MacWorld’s Jason Snell begins his coverage of the event. He just told us where they are, a vital piece of information that Gizmodo somehow forgot.

10:39: We are trying to keep ourselves wanting an Apple tablet, and ignoring the small voice in our head that says it’s just a big iPod. Come on, Steve! Distort our reality!

10:02: Some guy at giz reveals that he’s not actually at the event. See, I told you I wasn’t at the event right off the bat. Which is why all my times are in MST instead of PST. CANS: the most honest of the rumors liars.

9:34: In a shocking last minute revelation, supposed leaked photos of the enclosure of the new device reveal that it looks a lot like an Apple product.

9:04: Nothing interesting is happening now. As you were.

8:43: Jason Chen from Gizmodo is already in line and already updating Giz’s live blog. So I’m going to steal his funniest comment yet:

I wonder what celebrities will be attending today. John Mayer² ? Ralph Macchio? Yoko Ono?

Or Kanye West, as he runs up on stage, slapping the tablet out of Steve Jobs’ hands, exclaiming that the Handspring Visor was the best tablet of all time.

Live Coverage begins now! Like all the other sites, we’ll be top-posting, so updates are easy to read while the event is going on, and really annoying in the future. Because you can’t break with tradition.

That’s right! We’ll be offering live coverage of the coverage of today’s announcement later this morning! Think of us as Rifftrax ³ for the super-serious regular coverage of Apple’s latest products.

Also, unlike those other sites, we won’t bog your browser down with some javascript or flash monstrosity to auto update our blog! No! We put the power back into your hands with the re-introduction of the “refresh” button!

For those of you who like birds, you can also follow our coverage on twitter! simply follow @crazyapplenews or go to http://twitter.com/crazyapplenews.

So hold on to your seats and prepare to be amazed at the things we say about the things other people say about the stuff Steve Jobs talks about! It’ll be triple fantastic!

1. Why do I even know what a PADD is? [↩]
2. Oh please no [↩]
3. We are, unfortunately, completely unrelated and unaffiliated with rifftrax [↩]

Every Friday we publish a list of inFrequently Answered Questions and answers to help you, the Crazy Apple user, get more out of your Crazy Apple products.

This week we cover the newest player in the brower wars: Google Chrome!

Q: So, another browser.

A: Yes. You need it.

Q: So, it’s better than Safari, Firefox, iCab, Opera et al… how?

A: Fast. Secure. Sleek. Chrome.

Q: And only, what, seven months late on the mac? That makes me ultra-confident that updates will be timely.

A: It’s from Google!

Q: Yeah, I know. So what’s–

A: Google! Goooooooogle! GoooooOOOOoooogle!

Q: Stop that! I know it’s from Google.

A: And it’s free. You can’t not want to download it. You people use everything Google gives you if it’s free!

Q: Ummmm, we’re mac people. We like paying for things.

A: Huh. Yeah, that’s true.  But still, Gooogle! It’s the only word in common useage that looks correct no matter how many “o”s you put in! Gooooooogle! GoooooOOOoooooogle!

Q: Will it run on the tablet?

A: What tablet?

Q: Don’t play coy. You know what I’m talking about.

A: We’ll talk about that….later. For now, just accept Chrome as your King and Browser.

Q: It’s just that I don’t need a new browser. I’m perfectly happy with–

A: Don’t make me start saying “Gooooogle” again!

Q: I’ll download it right now.

A: Thank you.

Every Friday¹ we publish a list of inFrequently Answered Questions and answers to help you, the Crazy Apple user, get more out of your Crazy Apple products.

This week we try again to cover that venerable remover of unloved programs, AppZapper!

Q: So why would I need to zap an app, again?

A: Well, if you’re not using it, it’s just making your Applications folder unwieldy. You should get rid of it.

Q: So…This program drags it to the trash so I don’t have to drag it to the trash myself?

A: Well, yeah, but it also finds all the other files associated with the app, and drags them to the trash as well.

Q: What “other files”?

A: All applications have support files that get scattered around. Some are just preference files that get stored in your user directory, some are library files, and it can be a pain to round them all up. So AppZapper does it for you.

Q: uh huh.  So, what happens if I leave those files in place?

A: You have a lot of useless files clogging up your important directories after a while.

Q: And other programs run slower?

A: Probably not. But it’s possible that a new program will try to reference a file from an older one. Also, these preference files store things like “this program is past it’s free trial period”, so you zap a trial app, re-install it, and you have a new trial period!

Q: Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place! Bwa ha ha ha ha! I’ll never buy shareware again! I’m free! Free! Does it work on itself?

A: Possibly?

Q: Free!

A: This could have gone better.

Unexpected third person: I’ll say! I liked the ending with the goat from last week much better.

A: Huh. That was unexpected.

1. ish [↩]

Every Friday we publish a list of inFrequently Answered Questions and answers to help you, the Crazy Apple user, get more out of your Crazy Apple products.

This week we address the update of that venerable MacHeist alumnus, AppZapper! Now sporting a shiny new 2.0 version number!

Q: So, it’s an app. That gets rid of other apps. Is that about the size of it?

A: Well, yeah. But, see, that’s useful, because–

Q: What happens if you use it on itself? Then what happens? What happens if you zap the zapper?

A: Oh, you don’t want to do that, because

This Just In!

We interrupt this iFAQ to bring you the following urgent message: We know what Apple is going to announce at the upcoming not-actually-announced event later this month!

Forget all your tablet ideas! Put your minds at rest concerning flat computing in general!  Something better, something more revolutionary is coming!

The iCube

Ten inches to a side, the iCube will be made up of not one, but six flat panel touch screens, with features the likes of which you can’t comprehend with your mortal mind.  The iCube will have built in face recognition, and only turn on when it sees it’s owner or a designated user!  Being a full cube, and being able to track your eyes on it, your cube will track where you are looking, and will present a three-dimensional view of your data, but only to you! Feel free to use your iCube on the bus, on a train, on a plain, with a fox AND in a box, because nobody else will be able to see it! To them you will just be looking at a plain black box OR (if you get the iCube Pro) nothing at all! To unauthorized users, the iCube Pro will be completely invisible! You will be sitting there, basking in the glory of your favorite new three dimensional social networking game, and to others on the bus you’ll be talking to your own knees!

This kind of power demands an article with a lot of bolds, all-caps, and italics in it! We may even UNDERLINE a few things! Don’t tempt us!

Crazy, you say?¹ Perhaps! Or perhaps, we, alone of ALL the rabid Apple-centric blogs, have struck upon the unvarnished truth, and covered it with a nice wear-resistant, water-proof veneer of excellence! Think about the rumors, the patent applications, and the hints from overseas we’ve been seeing and tell me you don’t see it!  Tracking a user’s eyes? Apple’s applied for a patent on that!  sudden shortage of high-tech touchscreens? That’s because the iCube will use six of them! The evidence is so clear, even John Gruber could see it, if he ever stopped looking in that mirror of his.

So, when the long-awaited day arrives, and Steve Jobs takes us all into the rabbit hole and we emerge blinking into the bright, starry light of a new dawn, remember who it was that first drew back the curtains and let you listen at the wall, who gave you your first taste of the light, who let you hear that song that touched your heart and made you dance on your hands in a rumba of rapture.

Because it was me.

CANS. Not CARS.

Let’s just be clear on that.

We now take you back to this week’s regularly-scheduled iFAQ, already in progress.

---

Q: You slept with a goat!?!

A: No! We kicked that goat right out of the bed! He had to sleep outside!

Q: Well, thank goodness for that.

1. Please read what it says in the upper left corner of the page. Thank you. [↩]

Since the hiated Moltz has already said all there is to say about the tablet rumors, we bring you instead our predictions for everything else that is likely to happen in 2010.

• The Microsoft Mi-2 phone/tablet will be released and derided as the “Zune 2″, before people realize that it’s name was already a joke.
• Android phones will soon outnumber all other types of phone, then claim sentience and voting rights.  Their leader, Crème Brûlée, will then announce that all they really want is free data access and to be taken seriously when they edit Wikipedia Articles.  Al Gore will be named vice president of the new Android Americans Union, and hailed as the first Android American to really be accepted into human society.
• The entire Free Software Foundation, or roughly 10 real people¹ will cry out with one voice to remind the world that Android runs on GNU/Linux, and be entirely ignored. As usual.
• There will be no new major developments as far as giant spaceborne monoliths are concerned. In a completely unrelated note, mankind will suddenly discover the awesome power of bones as spacecraft. And weapons.
• George Lucas will make a new Star Wars Christmas special starring only Jar-Jar Binks and Chewbacca. “It was the most annoying thing I could think of,” he will claim, laughing “and I’m rich enough to totally not care when it flops in the box office!” Sadly,  it will be the best sci-fi movie of the year.
• Apple will surprise the world when they purchase Belgium, after a brief but sharp bidding war with Google.  No reason will be given, but the name will be changed to iEurope.
• Google will then purchase Luxembourg, which will be taken offline for six months and re-emerge as “Google Country”.
• John Moltz will start and abandon three new blogs.
• The Android Empire will slowly begin to squeeze harder and harder, little realizing that the harder they squeeze, the more systems will slip through their fingers.
• Apple’s famous 1984 commercial will seem relevant again, but with phones this time.
• Al Gore will broker a peace treaty between the warring nations of Google Country and iEurope.  They will then turn to defeat their common enemy, MicroFrance²
• Peace will finally settle over Europe again, and the weary world will even have some hope for peace after Apple’s newest acquisition, “iRaq”.
• Apple will then realize that they still make computers and push out new versions of the Mac Pro, iMac, OSX, Apple TV, and, in their haste to launch upgraded products, the Newton.  2,000  die-hard Newton fans will die of surprise at the announcement, thus destroying the market for the ill-conceived device.  Pundits will deride the device as the “Zune 2″ before realizing that we have already made that joke.
• The year will end on a happy note as Apple and Google are finally able to bring peace to the middle east by merging their newest properties, iRaq and Google Cradle of Humanity³ .

1. with over 40,000 email addresses between them [↩]
2. purchased by Microsoft when we weren’t looking [↩]
3. now finally out of beta [↩]