From news at welmac.org.nz Sun Apr 6 23:49:01 2008 From: news at welmac.org.nz (WelMac news) Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 01:49:01 +1200 Subject: [WelMac] Welmac News & Update 6 Apr 08 Message-ID: <22F3DE94-BF48-403A-880F-45E39EA1C7E4@welmac.org.nz> CONTENTS: ________________________________________________________________________ ____________ 1. MEETING UPDATE 2. ITUNES STORE TOP MUSIC RETAILER IN THE US 3. MERGING PDFS AND IMAGES IN LEOPARD'S PREVIEW 4. APPLE ONLINE SEMINARS COVER VARIOUS TOPICS 5. RECENT APPLE UPDATES 6. QUICK TABS IN SAFARI 3.1 7. CARBON COPY CLONER 3.1 RELEASED 8. PHOTOSHOP EXPRESS OFFERS FREE PHOTO EDITING ON THE WEB ________________________________________________________________________ __________ This email news and updates newsletter will be sent each month to all WelMac members who have requested to receive such messages when they applied/reapplied for membership. To subscribe, go to . ************************************************************************ MEETING UPDATES WelMac Kapiti Meeting For those members living at or near the Paraparaumu area, our next Kapiti meeting will be held at our normal time on Monday 7 April 2008. It will be at the Rita King Cottage at St Marks Church in Rosetta Road, Raumati and will take a look at Apple?s iWork 08 software package. WelMac Basics Meeting The next basics meeting will be held on Monday 14 April 2008. This meeting will be held in the Turnbull Room on the First Level of Turnbull House, 11 Bowen Street, Wellington from 7.10pm until 9.30pm. (parking should be available on The Terrace and further up Bowen Street, past The Terrace intersection) This meeting is a seminar style meeting and will concentrate on the basic operation of Macintosh computers. This months meeting will concentrate on using basic applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, databases and basic graphics software. Mac OS X Special Interest Group meeting The next Mac OS X Special Interest Group meeting meeting will be held on Monday 21st April 2008, 7 to 9:30 pm in the Turnbull Room at Turnbull House, 11 Bowen St, Wellington. It is open to all WelMac members (and prospective members) and the main goal of this meeting is for those "early adopters" who are already running Leopard to compare notes and experiences, and for anyone else who wants to run Leopard soon to come along and see it in operation, and ask any questions they might have. WelMac Main Meeting The next main meeting will be held on Monday 28 April 2008. This meeting will be held in the Ante Room on the Ground Level of Turnbull House, 11 Bowen Street, Wellington from 7.10pm until 9.30pm. (parking should be available on The Terrace and further up Bowen Street, past The Terrace intersection) The first part of the meeting will be a questions and answers session and this will be followed by supper. The main presentation will cover Backup Strategy including Time Machine & Time Capsule. ************************************************************************ 2. ITUNES STORE TOP MUSIC RETAILER IN THE US Apple announced on April 3 that the iTunes Store (www.itunes.com) surpassed Wal-Mart to become the number one music retailer in the US, based on the latest data from the NPD Group*. With over 50 million customers, iTunes has sold over four billion songs and features the world?s largest music catalog of over six million songs. ?We launched iTunes less than five years ago, and it has now become the number one music retailer in the world,? said Eddy Cue, Apple?s vice president of iTunes. ?We are thrilled, and would like to thank all of our customers for helping us reach this incredible milestone.? *Based on data from market research firm the NPD Group?s MusicWatch survey that captures consumer reported past week unit purchases and counts one CD representing 12 tracks, excluding wireless transactions. The iTunes Store became the largest music retailer in the US based on the amount of music sold during January and February 2008. ************************************************************************ 3. MERGING PDFS AND IMAGES IN LEOPARD'S PREVIEW by John Martellaro Preview is a powerful application that can do many things. One of the new features introduced in Leopard is the ability of Preview to merge several files of different types into one, say, PDF document. This can be particularly handy when you want to add a graphic or an additional page or two to an existing PDF file. That has been hard to do before Leopard. Let's say we have an existing PDF file like the one shown below. Open it in Preview. Under the View menu, select Sidebar if it isn't already visible. Now open the file you want to add in Preview, too. It could be another PDF, but I used a JPG in this example. Open its Sidebar as well. Here's the cool new feature in Leopard. Drag the new graphic's thumbnail image from one Sidebar to the other, as I've shown with the red line. Just drop it underneath the first image because you can reorder later. If desired you can drag more files into the first document's Sidebar in the same fashion. When you have them all, just drag a thumbnail up or down within the Sidebar to reorder. Finally, go to Preview's File menu and save the document in the format you desire. In this example I saved it as a PDF. Once you have the file saved, you can have fun verifying the multi-page PDF file with Quick Look by selecting it and then hit the spacebar. A final tip: multi-page docs in Quick Look will have scroll bars when you view them. Tis is only one of the number of new things Preview can do in the new Leopard version. The version of Preview that comes with Mac OS X Leopard is ?more than just a fast and efficient program for reading PDFs,? writes Kirk McElhearn of MacWorld. Using the latest version of Preview, you can ?enhance your images, annotate and merge PDFs, print multiple images on one page, and more?all without opening a specialized (and often expensive) image editor or PDF tool. Go to to get the full article. ************************************************************************ 4. APPLE ONLINE SEMINARS COVER VARIOUS TOPICS On the Apple web site, there are is a vast selection of online seminars that anyone can participate in once registered. Below are details of a couple of the seminars available at . Compatibility with Windows seminar for new Mac users The Mac is the best tool for both the office and the home, making it the ideal computer for a business. If you're one of the many businesspeople who is contemplating a move from another computer to the Mac, watch this online seminar to pick up useful tips and valuable information to help you make the transition seamless. Kenny Lee, from Apple's Small Business Marketing group, and Travis Fears from the Apple Store San Francisco present and demo specific content for new Mac business users . Get organized. Your Mac can help. If you?d like to get your life a bit more organized, you should watch ?Organize your work and life with your Mac.? The free online seminar shows you how you can take advantage of the powerful tools in Mac OS X Leopard ? such as Mail, Address Book, and iCal ? Bento, the personal database designed just for Leopard users, and FileMaker Pro to get more control of the contacts, events, projects, and other elements of your busy life. ************************************************************************ 5. RECENT APPLE UPDATES Apple updated Keynote to version 4.0.3 last Thursday, an update that, "Addresses performance and stability issues when working with large documents." The update requires version 4.0.2 to already be installed, and weighs in as a 20.5 MB download. You can find the update at Download section of Apple's Support site, or download it through Software Update. Apple released QuickTime 7.4.5 on Wednesday 3 April. The update for the multimedia playback and support system included security-related enhancements, improved compatibility with third-party applications, and improved reliability. The update addressed issues where Java applets could potentially gain elevated privileges, downloading specially crafted movie files could result in information disclosure, and viewing maliciously crafted movies or PICT files could crash applications or lead to arbitrary code execution. QuickTime 7.4.5 is available via Apple's Software Update application, or as a download at the Apple Support Web site. Versions are available for Mac OS X 10.3, Mac OS X 10.4, Mac OS X 10.5, and Microsoft Windows. Apple also released iTunes 7.6.2 at the same time. The update for the media management and playback application includes bug fixes, and improves overall application stability and performance. The iTunes update is available via Software Update, or as a download for Mac OS X and Windows at the Apple Support Web site Along with its iTunes and QuickTime updates, Apple also released Front Row 2.1.3. The update for the Mac-based media center application improves overall support for the new iTunes 7.6.2 update. Front Row 2.1.3 is available via Software Update, or as a download at the Apple Support Web site . ************************************************************************ 6. QUICK TABS IN SAFARI 3.1 by Jeff Gamet Tabbed browsing can save lots of Desktop space if you like to keep several Web browser windows open at the same time. Safari makes it easy to make new browser tabs with its Command-T keyboard shortcut, but if you are using Safari 3.1, you can Double-click to create new tabs, too. To create a new Safari tab with your mouse, just Double-click in the Tab Bar. Safari will create a new tab and automatically select it as your active browser window. Keyboard shortcuts certainly do make it easy to quickly perform tasks in Safari, like creating new browser tabs, but sometimes it can be even faster to create those tabs if you don't have to take your hand off your mouse to move to your keyboard. Double-click tabs is a feature that Firefox has been offering, so it's nice to see it finally show up in Safari, too. ************************************************************************ 7. CARBON COPY CLONER 3.1 RELEASED by Adam C. Engst Bombich Software has released Carbon Copy Cloner 3.1 (CCC), a notable update to the popular disk cloning and backup software. CCC 3.1 implements rsync 3.0 for "greater fidelity" when backing up using CCC's Copy Selected Items backup method, improves the already solid interface wording that explains what CCC will do for each selected action, adds "bootability" checks to see if the backup volume will be bootable (this doesn't work with duplicates made over a network, alas), and more. A variety of bugs were also fixed, so backing up to a remote Mac using a path with a space in it uses the correct location, invisible flags are maintained in Leopard when using Copy Everything, scheduled tasks in Leopard now run reliably after a reboot, and it's now possible to install CCC's Authentication Credentials package from multiple source Macs onto a single target machine (previously, manual tweaking of the authorization credentials was necessary to make this setup work). For those who haven't used Carbon Copy Cloner, it's a full-featured cloning, synchronization, and backup program with scheduling and archiving features. I've started experimenting with Carbon Copy Cloner to create bootable duplicates of my primary work machines over the network to disks installed inside my Power Mac G4 file server. (This is in addition to Time Machine backups of my Leopard Macs, and Retrospect home folder backups of Macs running Tiger or Panther, all to the same Power Mac G4.) The capability to create a bootable duplicate over a network is uncommon, shared only with EMC's Retrospect (the excellent SuperDuper can create a backup to a remote disk image over a network, but that's not bootable). Carbon Copy Cloner's network duplicates work much more quickly than those in the current version of Retrospect. Carbon Copy Cloner 3.1 requires Mac OS X 10.4.8 or higher and works well with Mac OS X 10.5.2. The program is uncrippled shareware, meaning that all features are available whether or not you've paid, and no registration is ever required, but Bombich Software appreciates donations once Carbon Copy Cloner has proven its worth to you. It's a 2.1 MB download. ************************************************************************ 8. PHOTOSHOP EXPRESS OFFERS FREE PHOTO EDITING ON THE WEB by Jeff Carlson Adobe has announced Photoshop Express, a new online photo service that makes it easy to upload, share, and - more important - edit digital photos without running a dedicated program such as iPhoto or Adobe's own Photoshop Elements. The service is free, currently includes 2 GB of online storage, and is a public beta. It also requires Flash 9 to operate. You can tour the service's functionality by clicking the Test Drive button on the home page. It's easy to see the appeal of Photoshop Express as being "Photoshop on the Web," a way to tap into the long heritage of image editing established by Adobe Photoshop. But when I saw a preview of the service last week, my first thought was, "This is more like a really good online version of iPhoto." It features an easy-to-use interface and basic capabilities for uploading and organizing images into photo albums, as well as sharing photos with others (I've made a couple of galleries available). As you might expect from technology based on Photoshop, the service shines when it comes to making adjustments to your photos. You won't find levels or curves adjustments in this consumer-oriented approach. Making an adjustment such as exposure gives you a strip of thumbnails with various degrees of the settings applied; click the one that looks best to you. (A few adjustments, such as White Balance, also offer sliders for a bit more control over how the effect is applied.) Making edits is also non-destructive, with a clear method of reverting to previous edits and toggling the application of adjustments you've applied. A few corrections are quite nifty, such as the capability to "pop" a color and make the rest of the image grayscale. And I'm impressed by the implementation of the Retouch feature, which gives you more control over fixing blemishes than just applying spot patches to them. Photoshop Express isn't a serious competitor against an established photo-sharing service such as Flickr, which functions as much as a social networking site as a way to post photos. Photoshop Express also lacks the capability to assign tags to images (which makes finding them easier later) or even a way to rename them, though you can add and edit captions. However, Adobe clearly understands this, because you can import and export pictures between other services. The service currently supports Facebook, Photobucket, and Picasa; an Adobe representative said that they've signed an agreement with Yahoo to add Flickr access soon. Photoshop Express also isn't the first online photo editor, but does have the advantage of being Photoshop-derived. Picnik, which Adam wrote about last year (see "Picnik Duplicates iPhoto on the Web," 2007-09-07) offers similar features and works with many online services. In Flickr, for example, clicking the Edit Photo button that appears above one of your images opens the photo in Picnik. The service does have a few drawbacks. Photoshop Express is currently limited to users in the United States. It's also quite network- intensive, since the majority of the processing is being done on Adobe's servers. While working in Photoshop Express on one computer, I've seen the Internet performance on other computers on my network slow down. The service is also built entirely in Flash; I've never been a fan of the technology, which has always struck me as overly resource-intensive and, frankly, annoying. That said, Photoshop Express reminds me that Flash doesn't have to be equated with annoying banner ads or goofy online greeting cards. Adobe said that this iteration is specifically focused on consumers. Future revisions are likely to bring improvements such as more storage (for a fee, I would assume), a way to order prints directly, built-in support for the service in Adobe's applications, and probably more robust tagging and sharing options. At its launch, Photoshop Express also stepped into a legal quandary: The terms of service (the ones you agree to, usually without reading) indicate that for any photos uploaded and made available for publicly sharing, "you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed." In other words, Adobe can do whatever it wants with your images. Later in the day, Adobe responded with a promise to change the language, writing, "We've heard your concerns about the terms of service for Photoshop Express beta. We reviewed the terms in context of your comments - and we agree that it currently implies things we would never do with the content. Therefore, our legal team is making it a priority to post revised terms that are more appropriate for Photoshop Express users. We will alert you once we have posted new terms." Photoshop Express won't replace iPhoto or Photoshop Elements, but it does offer a high degree of near-immediate gratification. If you want to upload something quicl and make a few corrections (from any computer, since it's entirely Web based), the hassle factor is incredibly low. It's also an easy way for non-technical friends and relatives to make their photos available. ************************************************************************ Some articles above have been reprinted with permission from TidBITS. TidBITS has offered more than ten years of thoughtful commentary on Macintosh and Internet topics. For free email subscriptions and access to the entire TidBITS archive, visit www.tidbits.com. ************************************************************************ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From news at welmac.org.nz Sun Apr 27 22:01:31 2008 From: news at welmac.org.nz (WelMac news) Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2008 00:01:31 +1200 Subject: [WelMac] Welmac News & Update 27 Apr 08 Message-ID: <4F123013-731A-4DDA-82DC-A6DFDA38DF83@welmac.org.nz> CONTENTS: ________________________________________________________________________ ____________ 1. MEETING UPDATE 2. APPLE REPORTS RECORD SECOND QUARTER RESULTS 3. MAC 911 - SOLUTIONS TO YOUR MOST VEXING MAC PROBLEMS 4. APPLE TV WITH 2.0 SOFTWARE 5. ICAL: YOUR POWERFUL PERSONAL ASSISTANT ________________________________________________________________________ __________ This email news and updates newsletter will be sent each month to all WelMac members who have requested to receive such messages when they applied/reapplied for membership. To subscribe, go to . ************************************************************************ 1. MEETING UPDATES Wellington Meeting The next main meeting of the Wellington Macintosh Society Inc. will be held on Monday 28 April 2008. This meeting will be held in the Ante Room on the ground level of Turnbull House, 11 Bowen Street, Wellington from 7.10pm. This month's topic will take a look at the need to establish a backup strategy if you want to protect your valuable data. Much of the presentation will centre around the new 'Time Machine' in OSX 10.5 'Leopard' along with the newly released 'Time Capsule'. As usual, we'll start with our Q&A session followed by a short supper before the main presentation. Kapiti Area Meeting For those members living at or near the Paraparaumu area, our next Kapiti meeting will be held at 7.10 pm on Monday 5 May 2008. It will be at the Rita King Cottage at St Marks Church in Rosetta Road, Raumati. The topic of the meeting will be the same as the Wellington meeting, i.e. Backup Strategy. Mac Basics Meeting This meeting is an introduction to computing on a Macintosh will be held on Monday 12 May 2008 starting at 7pm in the Turnbull Room on the 1st floor of Turnbull House. Mac OS X Special Interest Group Monday 19 May 2008 starting 7 pm in the Turnbull Room on the 1st floor of Turnbull House. This meeting will be covering an introduction to Mac OS X for people who are already familiar with Windows but having trouble finding their way around the Mac. We'll also look at VMware Fusion. ************************************************************************ 2. APPLE REPORTS RECORD SECOND QUARTER RESULTS Apple announced on April 23, 2008 its financial results for its fiscal 2008 second quarter ended March 29, 2008. The Company posted revenue of $7.51 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.05 billion, or $1.16 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $5.26 billion and net quarterly profit of $770 million, or $.87 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 32.9 percent, down from 35.1 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 44 percent of the quarter?s revenue. Apple shipped 2,289,000 Macintosh? computers during the quarter, representing 51 percent unit growth and 54 percent revenue growth over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 10,644,000 iPods during the quarter, representing one percent unit growth and eight percent revenue growth over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone? sales were 1,703,000. ?We?re delighted to report 43 percent revenue growth and the strongest March quarter revenue and earnings in Apple?s history,? said Steve Jobs, Apple?s CEO. ?With over $17 billion in revenue for the first half of our fiscal year, we have strong momentum to launch some terrific new products in the coming quarters.? ?We?re thrilled to have generated $4 billion in cash flow from operations in the first half of fiscal 2008, yielding an ending cash balance of $19.4 billion,? said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple?s CFO. ?Looking ahead to the third quarter of fiscal 2008, we expect revenue of about $7.2 billion and earnings per diluted share of about $1.00.? ************************************************************************ 3. MAC 911 - SOLUTIONS TO YOUR MOST VEXING MAC PROBLEMS by Christopher Breen Manual keychain editing Reader Brenda Rather, in a message entitled "I Have Shot Myself in the Foot," writes: "I was searching through some Macintosh forums and saw someone's advice to go to a so-and-so folder and throw away a file that held some of my passwords to workaround a problem. So I did and now each time I log in to Entourage, I have to re-enter passwords for all four of my accounts. How can I re-enter these passwords permanently so that I don't have to do that anymore." If you find that enabling the Add to Keychain option is doing you no good, you might first try repairing your keychain. To do so, launch Keychain Access (found at /Applications/Utilities), choose Keychain First Aid from the Keychain Access menu, enter your user name and administrator's password in the window that appears, enable the Verify option, and then click the Start button. If any red entries appear indicating there's a problem with some of your keychain items, enable the Repair option and click Start again. If that doesn't do the trick, you can manually add keychain items. You do that by choosing File -> New Password Item. In the sheet that appears you'll see three blank fields. In the first one enter the IMAP, POP, or SMTP address for your first account. So, for example, if you're constantly prompted for a password for your receiving (POP) email account, you'd enter something like: pop://pop.example.com or imap:// imap.gmail.com. In the next field you enter the account name you use with your email client--brather at example.com, for instance. Finally, in the last field enter the password for this account. Click Add and the item is added to your keychain. Repeat for your other accounts. With luck, Entourage will stop the nagging. If even that won't work, you can always start over. If you do you'll have to enter all your passwords again--not only for your email accounts but all other passwords including those for websites that were once stored in your keychain. (Are you getting the idea that this is a court- of-last-resort solution and best avoided if possible?) The way to start over is to open Keychain Access' Preferences and click the Reset My Keychain button. This creates a new, empty keychain. Excluding items when searching Reader Steve Good isn't feeling so good about the Finder's ability to find--or, in this case, exclude--files. He writes: "I want to find all the images on my Mac not in iPhoto, and all music not in iTunes. I don't want to automatically add them; I want to find them. The Finder's Find command (and OS X) seems completely incapable of excluding a location (i.e look everywhere except the iPhoto Library folder and its interior folders). Since this seems beyond OS X, what's the shareware app to use?" It's not completely beyond OS X. Just open the Spotlight system preference, click the Privacy tab, navigate to your user folder in the Finder, and drag the folders or items you'd like to exclude into the Privacy window--in your case the iTunes folder and iPhoto Library package. When you next conduct a Spotlight or Finder search, you'll find all items except those within the iTunes folder and iPhoto Library. If you're looking for a utility that allows you to do this kind of thing without turning to Spotlight's preferences, check out Houdah Software's ?15 HoudaSpot 2.1 (Leopard-only). Rob Griffiths bestowed four mice on HoudaSpot 2 early last month, and for good reason. It allows you to create custom searches based on Spotlight data that are otherwise impossible. Among its many charms is the ability to easily exclude folders and their contents from your searches. If you're running Leopard, it's definitely worth a look. Local data migration Reader John Spahr is finally ready to make a commitment and needs just the gentlest push to seal the deal. He writes: "My Mac Pro has two hard drives. One of them has Tiger installed on it, which is what I normally use. I installed Leopard on the other to see what it was like. Now that 10.5.2 is out, I'm ready to use Leopard on a regular basis but my third-party applications aren't cooperating. When I launch them from the Tiger drive some can't find their registration and others are missing support files or the custom settings I've created. Is there a way to clean up this mess?" Use Migration Assistant. Most people think of Migration Assistant as a one-time tool you use when you want to move data from an old Mac to a new one, but it works locally as well. Boot from the Leopard drive and navigate to the Utilities folder within the Applications folder at the root level of the drive. Launch Migration Assistant, press the Continue button on the first screen to get started, and enter your Administrator's password when prompted. On the Migration Method screen select the From a Time Machine Backup or Other Disk option and click Continue. On the next screen you'll be prompted for a system to transfer from. Select your Tiger disk. You'll then be prompted to select the users whose data you'd like to transfer information from. At the very least, you should select your user account. You can choose other accounts if you'd also like to transfer their settings and data. You're then prompted to select the kind of items you'd like to transfer. You'll have the greatest success by leaving all three options-- Applications, Files and Folders, and Library--checked. (Note that if you have a newer version of an application on your Leopard drive, it won't be replaced by an older version from the Tiger drive. The newer version will remain.) Click the Continue button and wait as Migration Assistant goes about its business. No slo-mo in iMo '08 Reader Susan wonders about a feature that appears to be missing from iMovie '08. She writes: "In iMovie '08 I can't seem to find the effects I had with the previous version of iMovie, specifically the slow-motion effect. What's going on?" While iMovie HD and iMovie '08 share the same given name, their similarity pretty much ends there. They are two completely different applications and many of the features found in iMovie HD are missing in the latest version of iMovie (and, to be fair, there's some vice versa here--iMovie '08 has some compelling features not found in the older version of the program). Regrettably, that slow-motion effect is one of the features missing in iMovie '08. You have a couple of options. The first is to bid iMovie '08 adieu and return to the version of iMovie distributed with iLife '06. If the copy you had is gone, you can download a fresh copy from Apple's website. iMovie HD and iMovie '08 will live in harmony in your Applications folder so you needn't delete iMovie '08 when you install the older version. The other option is to continue working in iMovie '08, extract the clip you want to slow down, slow it down, and then bring the sloth- like version back into iMovie. Karsten Schluter explains the process on this page. Here's the gist: First, locate your clip. You do this by selecting the clip in iMovie's Event Library pane. In the clip pane to the right, Control- click (Right- click) on the clip and choose Reveal in Finder from the contextual menu. The Mac switches to the Finder to reveal the highlighted clip. Now download a copy of Jan Schotsman's free JES Deinterlacer. JES Deinterlacer has a few talents but the one we're specifically interested in is its ability to slow down or speed up a movie file. To do this, open your clip in the program (just drag it to the application icon), click the Project tab, and edit the Movie Speed field. If you'd like the movie to play half as fast, for example, enter .5 in this field. A tenth as fast would merit a .1 entry. You can leave the other settings alone. Select the Output tab, click the Put button, choose a location for your slowed-down clip, and click the OK button at the bottom of the window. JES Deinterlacer will export your clip in slo-mo. Now simply import the edited clip into iMovie '08 and edit at will. Leaving the past behind Reader J.T. is having a hard time letting go of the past. He writes: I have a Microtek ScanMaker X6EL flatbed scanner ,which I want to connect and use with my iMac PowerPC G4, 800 MHz computer. Since this scanner is no longer supported by Microtek, their Tech Support advised that I should try the software program VueScan. He then goes on to list a pile of adapters he'd use to allow the scanner's SCSI interface to connect to the iMac's FireWire port. He concludes: The estimated total cost of this hardware/software bundle is $200+. Is there a simpler, less costly, way to connect and operate the Microtek ScanMaker X6 EL scanner with the iMac computer under Mac OS X, v. 10.4.11? Will the listed hardware/software above work? Any other suggestions, other than purchase a "new, modern" scanner and start over? J.T., the danger of asking for help from others is that they'll occasionally offer advice that you don't want to hear. Example: When you ask, "My girlfriend has threatened to poison my chowder the next time I sneeze and I believe she's quite serious about it. Other than dumping her, what can I do?" a person who truly cares about your welfare will suggest that you back up a step and reconsider your commitment to this modern-day Borgia. This is one of those cases. Although you don't want to hear it, it's time to let go of that old scanner and get a new one. Here's why: Those connectivity and driver issues are a biggish deal. Once upon a time I tested some FireWire to SCSI adapters and I have to say I found them problematic. (But things may have improved since then-- commenters, feel free to offer your experiences). And while VueScan is an impressive piece of engineering, wouldn't it be nicer if your scanner just worked with your Mac--and continued to work with the next major Mac OS update? Also, your scanner offers 1200 dpi resolution. You can get that same resolution from a scanner today for $50. For that $200 you'd spend cobbling together a solution for your current scanner you can have a new scanner that offers 4800 x 9600 resolution. It's likely that this new scanner will also handle slides (though not to the extent of a dedicated slide scanner) and include a modern copy of Photoshop Elements. To sum up: Honestly, unless your old scanner is the reincarnation of a beloved ancestor, I see no reason to hang onto it. I understand the pain of discarding a perfectly good scanner. It's not broken, it's simply outdated for your current setup. You can help alleviate some of that pain by donating the scanner to a group that can still use it--a school, Macintosh users group, church, or senior center. Someone will surely find a use for it. This way you get a scanner that works, someone else gets a scanner that works, and you've kept another hunk of plastic, metal, and glass out of the local landfill. iCal and the 24-hour clock Reader Graham Hibbard feels hemmed in by iCal's 12-hour nature. He writes: I am using 10.5 with iCal, and everywhere else on my MacBook seems to able to handle the 24-hour clock except iCal. I notice that any iCal events will only give me an AM/PM option. Any fix for this? There is. Within System Preferences open the International system preference and click the Formats tab. In the Times portion of the window click the Customize button. In the sheet that appears you'll see the time in 12-hour format. Click on the hour and from the pop-up menu choose 1-24 to select the 24-hour format. To prevent AM and PM from showing you can either delete the contents of the Before Noon and After Noon fields or, in the field where the time is displayed, select AM or PM and press the Mac's Delete key. When you have things configured to your satisfaction, click OK to dismiss the sheet. If iCal is running, quit the application. When you next launch it you'll see your events displayed in the 24-hour format. Should you wish to return to the U.S. default 12-hour format, just open the International system preference again, click the Formats tab, and from the Region pop-up menu choose United States. Reinstalling OS X applications In what some might term throwing the infant out with the water in which it was steeping, reader J.S. did something that he now regrets. He writes: Last year I had significant problems with my iCal application. I was so dissatisfied, I deleted the application entirely and installed Sunbird. I'm wondering if it's possible to download a new, hopefully improved, version of iCal? Before we start, I should mention that tossing out applications-- particularly those that are bundled with the Mac OS--is not a good idea. If you don't like a particular application, simply ignore it and, chances are, it won't bother you. Now, to your particular problem. iCal is an application bundled with Mac OS X and the only way to obtain a new version is to upgrade your version of the Mac OS--move from Tiger to Leopard, for example. However, you can reinstall the version of iCal you once had. Why do so when you were unhappy with it in the past? It's possible that something else running on your Mac was causing iCal to misbehave and a subsequent OS update--a point update such as 10.5.2, for example--addressed that issue, allowing iCal to run as Jobs intended. Fortunately, you needn't reinstall the entire operating system to get a single application back. Both the Tiger and Leopard Installer discs include an Optional Installs installer. Launch this installer (found in the Optional Installs folder on the Leopard disc) and at the root level the Tiger Installer disc. Just launch the installer and click the Continue buttons until you reach the Custom Install screen. Click the triangle next to Applications, tick the box next to iCal, and click the Install button to install iCal. With both the Tiger and Leopard Installer discs the Applications area of the Custom Install screen includes options for installing Address Book, iCal, iChat, iTunes, Mail, Oxford Dictionaries, Safari, and X11. Other options include Additional Fonts, Language Translations, and Printer Drivers. If you'd like to reinstall applications that aren't offered in the Custom Install screen--applications in the Utilities folder, for example-- you can use Charles Srstka's $20 Pacifist. It works this way: Insert your Mac OS X Installer disc. Download Pacifist and launch it. In the window that appears click the Open Apple Install Discs button. A window will appear offering you the single choice to look at the OSInstall package. Click OK. Pacifist will churn away for a bit and then you'll see a window titled OSInstall.mpkg. In this window you can dig down through the hierarchy of folders to find what you seek or you can enter the name of what you're after in the Find field and press Return. A drawer appears that lists the names of matching files. To install an item click the Install button in the upper-left corner of the window. You'll be prompted for your administrator's password. Enter it, click OK, and the item will be installed into its proper location on your Mac's hard drive. ************************************************************************ 4. APPLE TV WITH 2.0 SOFTWARE by Bill Davies, In February 2008 I took the plunge and integrated an AppleTV box into my home audio and video system. Apple announced an important feature upgrade in January, which arrived in February, and finally made the AppleTV a viable product. It is not without its limitations, which I discuss below, but all in all is a truly amazing introduction to on- demand movie viewing. To recap, the original AppleTV, introduced a year ago, could do nothing unless paired with a Macintosh on your home network. So you needed to go to the iTunes store on your Mac, purchase a movie, and then you could view it on your big screen TV if the AppleTV were connected to the TV. The big sales pitch, at the time, was that the AppleTV would allow you to you?re your iPhoto library photos on your TV, and to watch movies downloaded (and purchased) from iTunes. But you also need to remember that the movie industry saw what iTunes did to the music business, and determined that they were not going to let Apple steal their kingdom away from them. So the movie industry has retained a firm grip on what you can watch, how you can get the content, and how many times you can watch what you bought or rented. Thus the AppleTV with 2.0 software is a marvelous device that does what it claims to be able to do (rent movies from big studios), within the constraints placed on the movie download business by the big studios that must first license the content. Much like Apple?s more recent Time Capsule device (a box that lets you back up all your Macs to a central backup location using Time Machine), the AppleTV is a square box about the size of an Airport base station, but instead of 6 network jacks on the back, the AppleTV contains all the video and audio ports you need to connect it to your flat screen (or other) television, as long as your TV supports either component connections or HDMI. (It?s sort of like what a Mac mini should have been, basically a Mac devoted to processing video and audio signals.) You can put the AppleTV next to your television, or, as in my situation, in a different room connected to your AV receiver. The AppleTV can join your existing wireless network, or you can plug it in with an Ethernet cable for faster download speeds. Interestingly, the AppleTV does not contain a DVD player, so you can?t slip a DVD in there. All content has to be digital. Think Steve is sending a message here? (Note, if Apple wants to jump on the Blu- Ray train, they might try selling an AppleTV with a Blu-Ray drive in it, so it would add more value to the user's existing setup.) There is a very user-friendly menuing system that is remarkably close to FrontRow on your Intel Mac, which takes over your TV screen when you press the Apple Remote buttons. The February 2008 is significant in that it un-tethers the AppleTV from your Macintosh. The AppleTV still shows up as a device along the left side of your copy of iTunes, but once it is on your network and configured, it can access the iTunes movie rental store whether your Macintosh is turned on or not. (And it can also access any of the content on YouTube, if you are a YouTube junkie, as well as the iTunes store on Apple?s web site.) Furthermore, you don?t have to buy movies, but rather the AppleTV presents an elaborate interface that displays thumbnails of all the movies available from Apple for rental. Yes, that?s right, rental. Basic movies are $2.99 and you have one month to watch them; the few HD titles are $3.99 and offer better resolution, which only matters if you have a very expensive TV. Once you actually start watching the movie, you have 24 hours to finish watching it. Although the AppleTV comes with a little Apple Remote, I have my universal remote control for the home system configured to let me turn on the TV, select the AppleTV as the input source, and scroll through the available rental titles. Once you have selected a title you want to watch, you can either view a trailer of the movie or rent it. Downloading then begins immediately and you are ready to watch your movie within a minute. (Admittedly, I am on SureWest fiber, so I am not sure what this would be like on a slow DSL system.) So the big issues for AppleTV are these two: the selection of rentals sucks, and the device will only play back mainstream video content that you download from Apple. For example, Amazon Inbox claims 10,442 movies for rent, but you have to watch them on your computer. (Don?t be surprised if Amazon partners with a hardware company to remedy this in the near future.) Apple offers just 770 movies, a large number of them from the Disney catalog, since Steve Jobs sits on Disney?s Board of Directors. Only a small number of those are true HD movies. (Apparently the AppleTV up converts movies to 1080i format to match your 1080i television; but since my television is two-years-old and 720p, I was just as happy to tell the AppleTV not to up convert the signal.) The second flaw, for some people, is that the AppleTV won?t just play back any old video file you send over to it, and there are some rough edges caused by this new software update that essentially uncouples the AppleTV from your Mac. Thus with the 1.0 software, you could create content on your Mac in movie (preferably HD) and ship it over to the AppleTV. The new software and the new rental model make it decidedly much harder to ship content over to your AppleTV, and forget it if you want to view a non-commercial file in Diva, Avid, AVI, WMV, MPG, MPEG, ASF, RM, RMVB, MOV, ASX, SVCD, or VCD format. While I have read anecdotal reports of people using iTunes to export their home movies to ?AppleTV? format, I happen to own two Pirates of the Caribbean movies purchase from Apple last year, and while I can view them on my computer using iTunes, I had to do a Google search to figure out how to view a purchased movie living on my Mac on my flat screen TV. (The answer is to use the FrontRow interface on your TV screen to navigate to ?My Shared Movies,? which scans the Mac you have paired with AppleTV, and that will let the AppleTV access movies that you have purchased via iTunes.) So with AppleTV 1.0, this would have been a no- brainer, and with AppleTV 2.0, they seem to have made some things harder so that they could focus on making movie rentals easier. Likewise I easily got my Mac?s music and photo library to show up on the TV with software version 1.0, but these features come and go with software version 2.0. Sometimes they work, sometimes not. I?m guessing there will need to be another software update once Apple figures out how this should all fit together. They certainly need to placate the people who spent the last year buying movies and TV shows from Apple instead of renting them. On the other hand, if you?re happy with Apple?s selection of movies on iTunes, then this is a non- issue for you. My conclusion is that if you?re a grandparent with a technical hankering and have grandkids come to visit periodically, the AppleTV is a marvelous tool that gives you access to all the Disney movies without having to run out and buy or rent those DVDs. At $299 for the top model, it?s a steal. It also is a good pacifier for people like me who go ballistic when my kids get fingerprints all over the DVDs and make them skip or freeze. Happy surfing! Now you can surf for movies while sitting on your couch. Movie quality is very acceptable, indiscernible from a DVD in most cases. Of the several movies we have rented, one had some video artifacts that caused me to become quite worried, yet the second one we rented displayed beautifully. And no fingerprints! That leads me to conclude that some of these movies were converted correctly, and some probably need to go back to the drawing board to get reconverted to AppleTV format with a little tweaking. On the subject of how many titles you have to choose from when renting, I feel that some of us have to take the plunge and start generating some demand. Additional titles will come, but I?d rather they arrive when they are properly mastered and have 5.1 sound, instead of getting access to 5,000 or 10,000 shoddy digital conversions. Certainly Apple?s service is not going to compete with Netflix or Blockbuster based on the lack of selection. (And it is common knowledge that Netflix is working on its own piece of hardware to let subscribers access movies via download.) Can you take one of your existing DVDs and rip it to your hard drive, then play on an AppleTV? I?m not entirely positive, but I believe the answer is ?no? due to copy protection issues. The AppleTV works as advertised and easily streams content from the internet. With little effort, it also plays movies or TV shows you purchased from Apple that live in you iTunes library. Most assuredly the revised AppleTV ?works just like a Mac should,? and even the most clueless person should be able to browse content and rent a movie with a few clicks of the supplied remote control (once you have it connected to your TV and connected to your network) ? assuming you can live with Apple?s paltry selection of titles. ************************************************************************ 5. ICAL: YOUR POWERFUL PERSONAL ASSISTANT When you add an event to your iCal calendar, you can do much more than simply name it and specify a date and time. Like a good personal assistant, it can remind you of upcoming events, help round up others for meetings, and even ensure that you have essential files in front of you at just the right moment. To access iCal?s hidden superpowers, just double-click on the event?s name (or select it and type Command-i), then click the Edit button. To invite other participants to an iCal event, just type their email addresses into the Attendees field. If you prefer, you can open iCal?s Addresses panel by typing Command-Option-a, and drag names from your contacts list. When you?ve added the desired contacts and event details, click Send, and Apple Mail will email the event request. If the event changes, you can send an update with the revised information. There are many options here. For example, you can assign customized, color-coded categories to help keep track of work projects, personal appointments, and other commitments. You can set up recurring events via the repeat menu, which allows for custom recurrences (say, the last Tuesday of May every ten years) in addition to daily, weekly, monthly, and annual events. To create an event that continues over one or more days, click the ?all-day? checkbox. You can ask iCal to remind you of your upcoming events through a powerful alarm function, which issues one or more event reminders via pop-up messages or email. When pop-up reminders appear, you can ?snooze? them for as little as one minute or as much as a week. You can even schedule the iCal alarm to automatically run a script or open a file on your computer at a specified time. You can also attach documents, graphics, or other files to an event ? pictures, maps, spreadsheets, or whatever ? and include any relevant URLs. Finally, you can insert additional text into the Note field: anything from a phone number to an entire meeting agenda. (Though this field initially displays as a narrow strip, you can type or paste in as much text as you like.) When you?re finished, click Done. All the data you added will appear next time you double-click on the event. ************************************************************************ Some articles above have been reprinted with permission from TidBITS. TidBITS has offered more than ten years of thoughtful commentary on Macintosh and Internet topics. For free email subscriptions and access to the entire TidBITS archive, visit www.tidbits.com. ************************************************************************ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From news at welmac.org.nz Sun May 11 23:32:33 2008 From: news at welmac.org.nz (WelMac news) Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 01:32:33 +1200 Subject: [WelMac] Welmac News & Update 12 May 08 Message-ID: <47CB166F-138D-4163-824E-43CAD869BC01@welmac.org.nz> CONTENTS: ________________________________________________________________________ __________________________ 1. MEETING UPDATE 2. APPLE TV GAINS MOVIE PURCHASES AND DVD DATE RELEASES 3. MAC 911 - SOLUTIONS TO YOUR MOST VEXING MAC PROBLEMS 4. SURFING FOR GREAT MAC FREEWARE 5. LATEST IMACS OFFER FASTER CPUS AND NVIDIA GRAPHICS OPTION 6. OPENOFFICE 3.0 BETA RELEASED FOR MAC OS X 7. TIME CAPSULE IS SO SIMPLE, JUST IGNORE IT 8. VODAFONE TO SELL APPLE'S IPHONE IN 10 COUNTRIES ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________ This email news and updates newsletter will be sent each month to all WelMac members who have requested to receive such messages when they applied/reapplied for membership. To subscribe, go to . ************************************************************************ **************************** 1. MEETING UPDATES Wellington Meeting The next main meeting of the Wellington Macintosh Society Inc. will be held on Monday 26 May 2008. This meeting will be held in the Ante Room on the ground level of Turnbull House, 11 Bowen Street, Wellington from 7.10pm. This month's topic will take a look at getting video into and out of your Mac. Once upon a time, video was the preserve of professionals who could afford expensive cameras and editing equipment, that is until Apple came up with Quicktime in 1994. Now video cameras have come down considerably in price and most digital still cameras and many cell phones are also capable of taking low resolution videos. With the introduction of YouTube and other similar web sites, getting your videos out to a wider audience has never been easier, that is if you know what to do. This months meeting will take a look at all the various options of taking video images, getting them into your computer and editing them into some resemblance of order and sharing them with others. As usual, we'll start with our Q&A session followed by a short supper before the main presentation. Kapiti Area Meeting For those members living at or near the Paraparaumu area, our next Kapiti meeting will be held at 7.10 pm on Monday 2nd June 2008 (which also is Queens Birthday this year). It will be at the Rita King Cottage at St Marks Church in Rosetta Road, Raumati. The topic of the meeting will be the same as the Wellington meeting, i.e. At general look at Video on your computer. Mac Basics Meeting This meeting is an introduction to computing on a Macintosh will be held on Monday 12 May 2008 (tonight) starting at 7pm in the Turnbull Room on the 1st floor of Turnbull House. This months meeting will look at the third topic in our series of three, using the internet. Mac OS X Special Interest Group Monday 19 May 2008 starting 7 pm in the Turnbull Room on the 1st floor of Turnbull House. This meeting will be covering an introduction to Mac OS X for people who are already familiar with Windows but having trouble finding their way around the Mac. We'll also look at VMware Fusion. ************************************************************************ **************************** 2. APPLE TV GAINS MOVIE PURCHASES AND DVD DATE RELEASES by Jeff Carlson The Apple TV, the company's "hobby" (according to Steve Jobs) media playback device, added to its appeal last week with a pair of movie- related announcements. First, it's now possible to purchase movies directly from the Apple TV; before, they could be bought only from the iTunes Store on a computer. Movies for sale are available only in standard-definition resolution, not HD, even when an HD rental is available for the same title. This feature appeared briefly several weeks ago, inconveniently the day I submitted the final version of my latest book, "The Apple TV Pocket Guide, Second Edition," to Peachpit Press. I wasn't able to successfully purchase anything on my Apple TV at the time, however, and Apple didn't get back to me with an answer before the capability disappeared. The other news from last week goes beyond the Apple TV. A collection of movie studios announced that movies would be available for the Apple TV and other on-demand services on the same date that DVDs are released. Previously, Apple's position was that movies would be available for rent or purchase 30 days after the DVD release date (no doubt a limitation imposed by the studios at the time). The participating studios include 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Lionsgate, Image Entertainment, and First Look Studios. The new policy has been slowly adopted for weeks. The Oscar- nominated film "Michael Clayton" appeared for rent at the iTunes Store and on the Apple TV when the DVD was made available, but the timing also coincided with the Academy Awards. I'm guessing the success of that movie on iTunes (where it remained the top rental for several weeks) helped convince other studios that the 30-day limitation was silly. Could this be the start of a clue among the movie studios? I'm not holding my breath. But it does show that they're finally realizing that although the main content may be the same - the movie - a DVD and a digital download are different offerings. People who purchase DVDs want higher video quality, something they can grab off the shelf that doesn't require an Internet connection, and the multitude of extras available on some DVDs. People who rent or purchase movies from direct services like the Apple TV are looking for near-instant gratification (depending on the capacity of one's Internet connection) and, most of all, convenience. ************************************************************************ **************************** 3. MAC 911 - SOLUTIONS TO YOUR MOST VEXING MAC PROBLEMS by Christopher Breen Troubleshooting .Mac iCal syncing Reader Turner Kellogg is unhappy with .Mac's inability to sync his calendars. He writes: For some reason I'm no longer able to sync iCal with .Mac on my home computer. When I try, I get a warning that tells me I have inconsistent data. I thought inconsistent data was the whole point of syncing! I've tried resetting the calendar in my .Mac preferences several times with no luck. I've also unregistered my Mac and then reregistered it to see if that would help. The next time I sync I get the same thing even though I have it set to replace the data on my computer with what's on .Mac. You're on the right track, but you need to take it up a notch. By that I mean that you should try mucking with your .Mac settings on every computer configured to sync its data to .Mac. That mucking takes this form: Begin by making a backup of your iCal and Address Book data. I explain how to back up iCal toward the end of this entry. To back up Address Book, in Tiger choose File -> Back Up Address Book and in Leopard choose File -> Export -> Address Book Archive. Should you need this backup you can use Address Book's Revert (Tiger) or Import (Leopard) commands to bring back your data. Now on to syncing. On the Mac that holds your master calendar--the one where you most often enter events--pull up System Preferences and click the .Mac preference. If you're running Tiger, click the Advanced tab, select the name of your computer in the list of registered computers, and click the Reset Sync Data button. In the resulting sheet click the right arrow button so that you'll replace any contact and calendar data on .Mac with the data on that Mac and then click the Replace button. If you're running Leopard, the process is similar. The difference is that you must choose the Sync tab in .Mac preferences, click the Advanced button, and then choose your computer and click the Reset Sync Data button. As promised, the data on your computer will replace the information on .Mac. Repeat this process for other Macs you've synced with .Mac. However, this time be sure that when you ask your Mac to Reset Sync Data, you click the left arrow button, which tells the .Mac preference to sync the data on your computer with info from .Mac. With luck, you'll no longer see the inconsistent data warning. I mention "luck" because even though this technique should work, it doesn't always. Some have found that they have better luck when they first hand-copy their iCal data from one Mac to the other. You can do this by choosing File -> Back Up Database (Tiger) or File -> Back up iCal (Leopard) to create an iCal Backup file. Make a copy of that file and take it to your other Mac. From within iCal on that other Mac choose File -> Revert to Database Backup (Tiger) or File -> Restore iCal (Leopard) and choose the backup file you created on the original Mac. This will cause iCal to replace all its calendars, events, and To Do items from the other Mac so be sure you don't have any unique information in this copy of iCal. (And to be safe, you might want to create a backup file of this iCal's data before replacing it.) Moving Mail accounts offline Reader and Weeds cast-member Andy Milder has recently made the transition from Entourage to Apple's Mail. Following that transition he encountered this issue: I've got a whole bunch of mail accounts that are halfway bogus and/or I don't want checked. That is to say, accounts that on rare occasions I'll check and download, but not always. Here's the $64,000 question: Is there a way to customize the Get Mail button so that it only checks the accounts I want checked? I've set the automatic checking to not bother with them, but the Get Mail button seems to check 'em all. You can't do anything with the button specifically, but you have a couple of options for barring particular accounts from retrieving mail. You've already mentioned that you can keep an account from being automatically checked by opening the Accounts preference, selecting an account, clicking the Advanced tab, and disabling the Include When Automatically Checking For New Mail option. As you rightly point out, this option has no effect on the Get Mail button. However, the checkbox just above it does. Disable the Enable This Account option and the account disappears from Mail's list of mailboxes. You can press Get Mail from now until doomsday, and the disabled account will be left unchecked. If you want an account ignored only occasionally, this isn't the best way to go as you have to dig down into Mail's preferences to switch it on or off. A more expedient route is to Control-click the account's Inbox in Mail's list of mailboxes and choose Take "nameofaccount" Offline. (Alternatively, you can choose Mailbox -> Online Status and, from the submenu, choose Take "nameofaccount" Offline.) A tilde-like symbol appears next to the account to indicate it's offline. Press the Get Mail button and the offline account will be ignored. To bring it back online, you can simply click the tilde- like symbol. Fix Apple TV wireless syncing We have a helpful crew here at Macworld. For example, not only did Chief Gemologist, Dan Frakes, propose a terrific Mac 911 question, but a couple of days later, answered it as well. We begin with the question: My Apple TV is having loads of connection problems. Unfortunately, over the past few weeks I changed my network configuration in the house and applied the Apple TV [2.0.1] update, so it could be due to either. Essentially, the Apple TV appears to be connected to the wireless network, and shows up in iTunes; I try to sync, and it appears (in iTunes) to start syncing, but it eventually drops off the network and out of iTunes. When I go to the TV, nothing has been added to the Apple TV, and it claims it's not connected to the network. So I connect it to the network again. Rinse, repeat. After a "Huh, let me look into it" response from yours truly, he came back with this: If your wireless network is set up as a 5GHz network using wide channels, the Apple TV can't maintain a connection. I disabled wide channels (which, unfortunately, reduces performance) and the Apple TV was able to join the network and, more important, maintain the connection. To earn my day's pay, allow me to add some details. Specifically, to do as Dan suggests, launch AirPort Utility, select your base station, make sure the AirPort item is selected in the toolbar, and click the Wireless tab. With the Radio Mode pop-up menu set to 802.11n Only (5 GHz), click the Wireless Options button. In the sheet that appears, disable the Use Wide Channels option, click Done, and then click Update to do just that to your AirPort Base Station. But hang on a sec, one tmartine in the Apple Discussion Forums contends that you can fix the problem without disabling wide channels. He suggests that while in the aforementioned Wireless tab, you hold down the Option key, click on the Channel pop-up menu, select 161, and click Update. Others have offered that any channel over 40 will work just as well. If you've had this problem and discover that tmartine's solution is the goods, please make your voice heard by putting the Comments link to good use. ************************************************************************ **************************** 4. SURFING FOR GREAT MAC FREEWARE by Tim Verpoorten When a new Mac user finds their way to a local MUG or listens to a podcast, or maybe even reads a Mac blog, they have a ton of questions to ask about switching to the Mac. We're responsible for trying to help them feel comfortable with the Operating System, and accomplish what they need to get done. I know that I receive a lot of email every month from new users that want to know exactly what applications, for the Mac, can help do what they did on their PC. It seems that the same groups of applications cause the new user the most consternation. I'm asked about FTP programs, graphic apps, text editors, apps to delete other apps, you get the idea. We all know that there are core applications all users seem to need when they work with a computer, either Mac or PC. Therefore our subject for this article is "Essential Mac Freeware" Quicksilver: http://docs.blacktree.com First let me start with the Granddaddy of Mac Freeware. In fact, this app has been said to have converted more Windows users to Mac users then any other application. It's Quicksilver. Most folks start using Quicksilver as a launcher, but that's just the start. When opened, it will create a catalog of applications and some frequently used folders and documents. Activate it, and you can search for and open anything in its catalog instantly. The search is adaptive, so Quicksilver will recognize which items you are searching for based on previous experience. Quicksilver's greatest strength, however, is not search. Any item you are able to find, drag, or otherwise pull into its universe is endowed with many potential uses. Hitting takes you to the action field, where you can use the same adaptive search to select what you would like to do. Among other things, files can be emailed, copied, compressed. Text can be modified, transmitted between programs, or searched for on the web. Some actions even support an indirect object, so you can send an item to a person, move files to another folder, or open files with a specific application. Quicksilver can be given the ability to understand the data inside of files, allowing you to work with data in new, faster ways. Plug-ins add both new items and new actions, allowing you to run scripts, send instant messages, dial phone numbers, look up words in a dictionary, queue up songs in iTunes party shuffle, and much more. FireFox: http://www.mozilla.com The reason that Firefox is my browser of choice is that it's cross platform compatible so that my Firefox on the PC at work looks and acts like my Firefox on the Mac at home. I can share add-ons and plug-ins. The bookmark syncing add-on works perfectly to keep my bookmarks and bookmark toolbar has the exact same links in the exact same place. FireFox works and has always worked for me. I could live with Safari, but after this long with FireFox, I think I'll stay with it. Us old folks are slow to accept change sometimes. Also if you put FireFox on a new Mac user's machine, and they've had it on a PC before, they'll feel right at home. Sometimes a familiar face is all it takes to overcome a switcher's initial trepidation. Here's another freeware application that may seem like a duplication, but believe me, any Mac user will be happy to have this chat application installed whether they already use iChat or not. AdiumX: http://www.adiumx.com Adium is a free instant messaging application for Mac OSX, released under the GNU GPL and developed by the Adium Team. With Adium, you can connect to any number of messaging accounts on any combination of supported messaging services and then chat with other people using those services. We all know that most folks are using chat services that their friends or family uses. If someone is on MSN, or Yahoo messenger, they'll feel lost on iChat alone. Adium is the answer. The services that are supported in Adium is AOL, ICQ, .Mac, Jabber, GoogleTalk, MSN, Yahoo, Bonjour, MySpace, Gadu-Gadu, and other lesser-known clients. It has OTR encryption, tabbed messaging, file transfer, and webkit message display. We know QuickTime can run many of the video and audio formats that a Mac user can encounter, and if you add, Perian: http://perian.org (Perian is a free, open source QuickTime component that adds native support for many popular video formats.) you'll be ready for almost all the codex's out there. But sometimes I want more from my video player. That's why I like to have a copy of, VLC Media Player: http://www.videolan.org/vlc on my Mac. VideoLAN was originally designed for network streaming but VideoLAN's main software, VLC media player has evolved to become a full-featured cross-platform media player. There was never a video that I found that I could not run in VLC. The features and the speed makes it my favorite media player. I also suggest that all new Mac users learn how to backup their favorite DVD's and video. With AppleTV along with other methods to stream and watch movies, TV shows, and online videos on your computers, iPods, iPhones and TV's it's important to understand how to distribute and create content. Therefore, I suggest downloading and using, MacTheRipper: http://www.mactheripper.org MacTheRipper is a freeware DVD ripper (extractor) for Mac OS X. It is dependent upon the open- sourced libdvdread and libdvdcss libraries. This product is made to backup DVDs you have legally purchased for personal use. MacTheRipper is also able to extract DVDs that have been damaged or improperly mastered. I'll finish off this essential Mac Freeware column with a couple utilities that we all seem to need at one time or another. The first one is an FTP client. There are several choices, I like to recommend, Cyberduck: http://cyberduck.ch Cyberduck is an open source tool that can handle both FTP and SFTP. Multiple connections are supported. Drag and drop is supported for transferring files between a server and your Mac. A transfer queue keeps track of the pending file transfers and supports resuming of both downloads and uploads. A simple bookmark manager ensures that you always keep track of your favorite servers. Core system technologies such as the Keychain and Rendezvous are supported. Cyberduck integrates seamlessly with external editors such as SubEthaEdit and BBEdit. Simple and full featured, what more do you want from an FTP client. You need to know what your Mac is doing. You need to know if the transfer speeds are fast or slow, is your CPU getting eaten up by some rogue application or process, and what about the temps inside you Mac and the fan speeds of your laptop, are they running at their highest efficiency? There are several nice freeware solutions for you try, last edition we looked at: iStatMenu: http://islayer.com I really like this app, but rather then belabor the point here, I plan on doing a whole article soon on Freeware maintenance utilities for the Mac. So let's finish with a backup solution that everyone needs to incorporate into their daily routines. There are several good solutions, but the one I like is the freeware application from Mike Bombich called, Carbon Copy Cloner: http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html The key to a successful backup plan is to actually do the backups regularly. When left to most Mac users, the task often gets tacked on to the end of a very long list of other things to do. When you eventually have a hard drive crash, the data is simply gone. You know that feeling -- you just lost six years of family photos. Your kids being born, their first birthdays, their first everything. The answer to this is consistent and regular backups, placed on a schedule and handled automatically by your computer. Carbon Copy Cloner can accomplish this and the back-up it creates is boot-able and fully functional when needed. ************************************************************************ 5. LATEST IMACS OFFER FASTER CPUS AND NVIDIA GRAPHICS OPTION by Mark H. Anbinder Apple recently released an update to its line of aluminum-clad iMac consumer desktops. The 20-inch and 24-inch flat-panel all-in-one computers now sport faster Intel Core 2 Duo processors, replacing the previous slate of 2.0, 2.4, and 2.8 GHz processors with 2.4 and 2.66 GHz options in the 20-inch form factor, and 2.8 and 3.06 GHz processors in the 24-inch units (see "Apple Releases New Aluminum iMacs, Refreshes Mac mini," 2007-08-13). The iMacs can be customized with up to 4 GB of RAM, as well as larger SATA hard drives, up to 500 GB in the $1,199 low-end configuration and up to 1 TB for the $2,199 high-end iMac. Hard-core gamers will love the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GS video card with 512 MB of video memory in the top-of-the-line iMac configuration (and available as a $150 option on the 2.8 GHz 24-inch model). Apple says its testing with Quake 4 demonstrates twice the performance from the Nvidia graphics card over the ATI Radeon HD in the other iMac configurations. (The first three iMac models offer varying Radeon cards with 128 or 256 MB of memory.) ************************************************************************ **************************** 6. OPENOFFICE 3.0 BETA RELEASED FOR MAC OS X According the John Martellaro of the MacObserver web based newsletter, OpenOffice.org has released the first beta of OpenOffice for Mac OS X. This version doesn't need to run in the X11 environment as version 2.x did; instead it runs natively on the Mac. "The cool thing is, while the market leading office suite vendor dropped VBA support and the Solver feature, OpenOffice.org recently introduced limited VBA support and includes a powerful Solver component. "In addition, OpenOffice.org integrates well with the Mac OS X accessibility APIs, and thus offers better accessibility support than many other Mac OS X applications. Finally, people like OpenOffice.org 3.0 for Mac OS X because of its very good stability and performance. Reportedly, some Mac users have switched to OpenOffice.org just because of its extremely good stability, OpenOffice.org said. The announcement also pointed out that not only is read and write support included for Microsoft binary file formats (.doc, .xls and .ppt) but OpenOffice can also open files created with Microsoft Office 2007 for PC or Office 2008 for Mac (.docx, .xlsx. and .pptx) The full feature list and download page are at the OpenOffice.org Website. The Mac file size is 167 MB and is for Intel Macs only. The OpenOffice.org group has said that they estimate the final release to be in mid September, 2008. ************************************************************************ **************************** 7. TIME CAPSULE IS SO SIMPLE, JUST IGNORE IT John Martellaro writes that according to David Pogue at the New York Times, the key feature of Apple's Time Capsule is to just ignore it. That has implications for spouses all over the world. Reviews are usually about features and usability. It's all about whether the system does what it says, is flexible and reliable, and is easy to use. In this case, Mr. Pogue's review focuses on a major design element of the Time Capsule, that is, it's so easy to use, so transparent, that the only thing to review is the fact that it just works. So just ignore it. "The beautiful thing about this arrangement is that it backs up your laptops automatically and completely, too? without your having to hook them up to anything," Mr. Pogue wrote. "Any time the laptop is open and turned on, like when you?re using it, the Time Capsule backup is quietly doing its thing. An animated icon on your menu bar?a tiny clock whose hands move backward?lets you know when Time Machine is doing its thing." When disaster strikes, one activates Time Machine [Leopard required]. "The sleek, modern-looking Leopard desktop falls away like a curtain, revealing, startlingly, a deep-space star field, Mr. Pogue wrote in awe. "The window that once contained your files remains floating before you, with dozens of iterations of itself, like file cards, receding into the background. You can now scroll backward through time until the window looks as it did before the unfortunate event." In addition, the device doubles as a wireless router and a networked printer can be attached, usable by all the Macs on the network. "You can?t imagine how satisfying it is to know that if your hard drive dies, you will lose no more than one hour of work," Mr. Pogue wrote. "This is a classic case of Apple?s insistence on simplicity taking its own version of the network hard drive into a higher realm. Setting it up was very simple, and using it is beyond simple -- you just ignore it." The unspoken words in the review go to the complex systems that some people set up, so complex that the spouse has no hope of utilizing the technology without an M.S. in computer science and a notebook full of diagrams and instructions. In the case of the Time Capsule, one need simply give the spouse, of either sex, a MacBook Air, and let it seamlessly backup. No fuss. No technical exclusion. That's what the Time Capsule is all about. ************************************************************************ **************************** 8. VODAFONE TO SELL APPLE'S IPHONE IN 10 COUNTRIES Apple?s popular iPhone will be moving into ten more markets around the world in 2008. Mobile phone group Vodafone announced on Tuesday 6 May 2008 that it had signed a agreement with Apple Inc to sell its iPhone in ten countries around the world. "Later this year, Vodafone customers in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey will be able to purchase the iPhone for use on the Vodafone network," Britain-based Vodafone said in a statement. Vodafone is being clear on which countries it will offer iPhone service packages, but isn't offering many more details. So far, the company hasn't offered exact launch dates, iPhone pricing, or information on how much service packages will cost. Vodafone made its announcement ahead of Apple, and it isn't the only cell carrier to make an announcement ahead of an official statement from Cupertino. Rogers made the same move in late April when it announced that it had partnered with Apple to bring the iPhone to Canada before the end of the year. Apple's iPhone is already available in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany and Austria. The company plans to sell 10 million units by the end of 2008. ************************************************************************ **************************** Some articles above have been reprinted with permission from TidBITS. TidBITS has offered more than ten years of thoughtful commentary on Macintosh and Internet topics. For free email subscriptions and access to the entire TidBITS archive, visit www.tidbits.com. ************************************************************************ **************************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From news at welmac.org.nz Tue Jun 3 20:51:49 2008 From: news at welmac.org.nz (WelMac news) Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2008 22:51:49 +1200 Subject: [WelMac] Welmac News & Update 4 Jun 08 Message-ID: <01918CF6-0BA8-4E94-9E5B-921C55CD5C02@welmac.org.nz> CONTENTS: __________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1. MEETING UPDATE 2. BENTO: AN EASY TO USE DATABASE APP 3. THE TRUE ORIGIN OF THE INTERNET 4. SUN INTRODUCES FREE VIRTUALIZATION SYSTEM, INCLUDES MAC 5. MAC 911 - SOLUTIONS TO YOUR MOST VEXING MAC PROBLEMS 6. FIREFOX 3 RELEASE CANDIDATE 1 POSTED 7. SPACES: GROUPING PROJECTS INSTEAD OF APPLICATIONS 8. MAC OS X 10.5.3 UPDATE RESOLVES NUMEROUS ISSUES ________________________________________________________________________________________________ This email news and updates newsletter will be sent each month to all WelMac members who have requested to receive such messages when they applied/reapplied for membership. To subscribe, go to . **************************************************************************************************** 1. MEETING UPDATES Wellington Meeting The next main meeting of the Wellington Macintosh Society Inc. will be held on Monday 30 June 2008. This meeting will be held in the Ante Room on the ground level of Turnbull House, 11 Bowen Street, Wellington from 7.10pm. The internet has become somewhat pervasive in our daily lives and for many, it has a positive impact and is an invaluable tool for keeping in touch with business contacts or family members. There is however, a negative side to this new communication medium and this months meeting will investigate the darker side of the internet and how you can protect yourself from being affected by the detrimental aspects of the internet. As usual, we'll start with our Q&A session followed by a short supper before the main presentation. Kapiti Area Meeting For those members living at or near the Paraparaumu area, our next Kapiti meeting will be held at 7.10 pm on Monday 7th July 2008 (which also is Queens Birthday this year). It will be at the Rita King Cottage at St Marks Church in Rosetta Road, Raumati. The topic of the meeting will be the same as the Wellington meeting, i.e. The Dark Side of the Internet. Mac Basics Meeting This meeting is an introduction to computing on a Macintosh will be held on Monday 9 June 2008 (tonight) starting at 7pm in the Turnbull Room on the 1st floor of Turnbull House. This months meeting will look at the first topic in our series of three, using the Finder to navigate and save files on your computer. Applications Special Interest Group Monday 16 June 2008 starting 7 pm in the Turnbull Room on the 1st floor of Turnbull House. These meetings will take a look at commonly used applications (software) and this month will be the first part of three looking at the uses and setup of basic databases and how you can make them work for you. **************************************************************************************************** 2. BENTO: AN EASY TO USE DATABASE APP by Nancy Gravley Bento is a database program for all of us who want to use a database program without having to design one from scratch. The company FileMaker is famous for - well for FileMaker. FileMaker is a complex database application that is used by large and small businesses to keep databases of extremely important business data organized. I have worked with FileMaker databases on numerous occasions, and each time I have been enormously grateful that all I had to do was fill in the blanks, as opposed to creating the databases. They are like the inside of my Mac. I really don't want to know how they work. However, there have been times when I really wished I could create a database for things that were important to me. Lets be honest here. A Microsoft Word table just doesn't cut it. I guess that FileMaker got wise to the fact that more and more people are using Macs, and not all of us are running businesses so they decided to tap into this new market by creating Bento, which is a simple database program for the average user. I happened to see an excellent demo of Bento a couple of days after it was introduced in January and began using it immediately. I have also taught a class in it so I got feedback from a number of others as well. Everyone I know who has used it just loves it. The application is designed to work with Leopard and it will not work with any other version of the OS prior to Leopard. It works intuitively with Address Book and iCal and the defaults are set for that although you have the option to turn that off if you wish. The first time you open Bento all of your Address Book files will automatically be used to create a data base which you can then adjust to meet your specific needs, selecting from the predetermined criteria or creating criteria of your own. Even more useful to my mind is the ability to take a flat database that exists outside of your Address Book file and, within a matter of moments, turn it into a useful, fluid database. For instance, I took my Mac user group membership database, which exists in a Microsoft Excel format and exported it into a "comma-separated value" format (CVS), which is required by Bento. Excel allows this export with a click, as do other applications like Numbers (part of the Apple iWorks package). I imported the CVS version of the database format and I instantly had a Bento database that I could individualize to meet my special needs. The one component of Bento that I don't find useful is the interface with iCal because Bento can not read any subscribed calendars, i.e., calendars that come to your home iCal calendar via the Internet.. However, this is a personal thing because of my reliance on subscribed calendars related to my user group activities. According to someone I spoke with at FileMaker, this element will not change in the future because of the basic design of Bento. Otherwise, I think Bento is fabulous and I am so glad to have access to a database application that I can not only easily use, but easily modify to fit my personal needs. I can also report that it is a very stable application - always a plus. Company: FileMaker Product: Bento List Price: U.S. $49 (single license) $90 (family license) Minimum Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), 512 MB Ram (1 GB recommended) **************************************************************************************************** 3. THE TRUE ORIGIN OF THE INTERNET As someone who thought that they had started using computers before the advent of the internet, this caught my eye and made me laugh so I thought I would pass it on. In ancient Israel, it came to pass that a trader called Abraham of Com did take unto himself a young wife by the name of Dot. And Dot of Com was a comely woman, broad of shoulder and long of leg. Indeed, she had been called 'Amazon Dot Com'. And she said unto Abraham, her husband 'Why dost thou travel far from town to town with thy goods when thou can trade without ever leaving thy tent?' And Abraham did look at her as though she were several saddle bags short of a camel load, but simply said, 'How, dear?' And Dot replied, 'I will place drums in all the towns and drums in between to send messages saying what you have for sale and they will reply telling you which hath the best price. And the sale can be made on the drums and delivery made by Uriah's Pony Stable(UPS).' Abraham thought long and decided he would let Dot have her way with the drums. And the drums rang out and were an immediate success. Abraham sold all the goods he had at the top price, without ever moving from his tent. But this success did arouse envy. A man named Maccabees did secrete (look it up, it means to hide) himself inside Abraham's drum and was accused of insider trading. And the young man did take to Dot Com's trading as doth the greedy horsefly take to camel dung. They were called Nomadic Ecclesiastical Rich Dominican Siderites, or NERDS for short. And lo, the land was so feverish with joy at the new riches and the deafening sound of drums that no one noticed that the real riches were going to the drum maker, one Brother William of Gates, who bought up every drum company in the land. And indeed did insist on making drums that would work only with Brother Gates' drumheads and drumsticks. And Dot did say, 'Oh, Abraham, what we have started is being taken over by others.' And as Abraham looked out over the Bay of Ezekiel , or as it came to be known 'eBay' he said 'We need a name that reflects what we are.' And Dot replied, 'Young Ambitious Hebrew Owner Operators.' 'YAHOO!' said Abraham. And that is how it all began. **************************************************************************************************** 4. SUN INTRODUCES FREE VIRTUALIZATION SYSTEM, INCLUDES MAC It?s becoming quite noticeable how many people are now contemplating or actually switching from PCs to Macs and the ability to runs Windows applications in tandem with Mac applications has no doubt been at the heart of this change. Up until recently, there was only three options available to run Windows on a Mac but this has now increased to four with a free offering coming from Sun Microsystems. John Martellaro of the Mac Observer noted in a recent issue of MacObserver that Sun Microsystems recently announced the formal release of Sun xVM VirtualBox, a free and open source desktop virtualization system for Mac OS X Leopard, Windows, Linux and Solaris hosts. The software will compete with VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop on the Macintosh platform. On the Mac, it supports Windows, Linux and Solaris VM clients. The Mac Observer interviewed Sun's Vijay Sarathy, Senior Director of Marketing for Sun xVM, to get the details. In February, 2008 Sun bought Innotek, the makers of the highly regarded VirtualBox, for an undisclosed sum in order to acquire the technology. VirtualBox is just part of a platform of several products under the xVM name and includes both the VirtualBox for desktop clients and the broader xVM virtualization and management portfolio. That includes the Sun xVM Ops Center and the Sun xVM Server scheduled for release in the Summer of 2008. The VirtualBox The desktop component, the xVM VirtualBox, has been under development for some time and is now at version 1.6. Since May 2, when a preview went live, there have been over 5 million downloads. Like current commercial products, VirtualBox uses hypervisor technology and uses the host-client technique, that is, there is one major host OS and the rest of the OSes run as guests under the host. The software is open source and released under the GPLv2 license for personal use. VirtualBox supports a huge range of host and guest operating systems enabling users to run everything from the latest Microsoft Vista and OpenSolaris applications to old Windows 98, OS2 or DOS alongside Apple applications on an Intel Mac for example. A mere 20 megabyte download, xVM VirtualBox software is incredibly compact and efficient and installs in less than five minutes, according to Sun. The Mac version requires Leopard, and Sun honors the Apple license for Mac OS X restricting OS X clients from running on, say, Linux hosts. Other than that, all the other host-client pairings are possible, and while Mr. Sarathy didn't have details of the Linux OSes, Sun says that just about any X86 client OS is supported. Sun's VP of Engineering for xVM, Steve Wilson, recently wrote about his experiences with Ubuntu on a Mac. VirtualBox has the advantage running under Solaris as the host OS, something the commercial competitors don't support at this time. Features Features include support for bridged Ethernet or NAT, USB 2 support with filter support to limit which host devices the guest OS can see, multi-screen resolutions so that guest OSes can span multiple monitors and CD/DVD passthrough. Shared folders with any client can be set up to share data across OSes, but the system can also be set up to impose zero data leakage between OSes for security. Virtual Box allows multiple checkpoints so that if, in a high security environment, the VM client becomes compromised, the state of the OS can be reset to a previous point, a "good state" in time. Mr. Sarathy wasn't able to provide details of the extent to which the memory and capabilities of advanced graphics cards are supported via the hypervisor. It's always an issue for hypervisors on kernel-based systems, and when TMO finds out more, we'll pass it along. One of the key features of the xVM Virtual Box is that APIs are exposed at every level. This allows solution providers and OEMs to build revenue-generating custom solutions such as secure desktop services. Sun has posted a page that contains all the known reviews of the VirtualBox. Server Products As mentioned above, the desktop xVM VirtualBox for personal use is just an entry point for a family of products. Sun is also developing advanced server solutions that will run on the bare metal, work at the enterprise level, and afford "live migration." That is, if the system detects a hardware failure, the running OS can immediately migrate to new hardware and continue running. The family of enterprise-grade products is, of course, key to the business model and is what allows Sun to offer the Desktop VirtualBox for free as an introduction to the family of Sun technologies. "Sun xVM VirtualBox is transforming the way people develop software," said Steve Wilson, vice president for xVM, Sun Microsystems. "Developers no longer need to be tethered to big testing labs. xVM VirtualBox software empowers developers to create multiple virtual machines, network them together and deploy them using their favorite operating system - all from a single laptop. With our xVM family of products, Sun delivers technologies to meet every virtualization need from the desktop to the data center." Downloading Sun's xVM Virtual Box 1.6 can be downloaded free after agreeing to the license. On the Mac, it requires OS X Leopard and 2 GB of RAM is recommended. ************************************************************************ MAC 911 - SOLUTIONS TO YOUR MOST VEXING MAC PROBLEMS by Christopher Breen Sending iCal invites to the many Reader C wishes to communicate with several people at once. The initialed one writes: Can I make iCal email an event to more than one user? Sure. It wouldn't be much of a calendar application if it couldn't. It can do this in a couple of ways. In Leopard's version of iCal, just click on the event and press Command- E to edit it. Click the Add Attendees link and in the field that appears, type the name of a person you'd like to invite. If that person appears in Address Book (and has an email address), iCal will autofill the email address for you. If they aren't in Address Book, just type the email address. To enter another address, type a comma and type the new name (if they're in Address Book) or address. Repeat as necessary. When you've finished entering addresses, press the Return key and then click the Send button. Mail will launch and your invitations will be sent to the addresses you entered in the Attendees field. You can also add multiple attendees by dragging several selected contacts or a group directly from Address Book onto the Add Attendees link. This is useful when you want to quickly add all the members of your platoon, bridge club, or extended family. Mail and its hidden headers Like many people, reader S. B. is concerned about spam. He writes: Mail's junk mail filters work pretty well for my use, but sometimes I need to open a message in the junk mail folder to determine if it is really spam or if it is coming from a new contact. I always keep the preview pane closed. In older programs I could view long headers or the raw source without opening the actual message. But in Mail, that is not an option, as these menu items are grayed out until you open the message. Is there a way around this? I realize that the junk mail filter does not initially load images, but I don't know if it still pings the spammer's server. As you've observed, Mail doesn't offer that option. Microsoft Entourage lets you view both long headers as well as the message's raw source in a separate window. And Mozilla Thunderbird, while it won't show headers with the preview closed, it will display the message's raw source. But before you dash off to install a different email application, let's examine the real threat here. And that threat is HTML links-- particularly links to graphics that, when loaded, send a little "yoo hoo!" message to the spammer, letting them know that they've found a live one. To keep these images at bay in Mail, choose Mail -> Preferences, click the Viewing tab, and make sure that the Display Remote Images in HTML Messages option is unchecked. This should keep you safe. All you have to do from this point on is to be careful about loading images or clicking links in your messages. If you don't trust or don't know the source, take what you can from the text and leave the links and potential graphics alone. If you're still spooked by the idea of viewing headers along with a preview of a message--even without HTML turned on--you can follow this little tip from Macworld's Gemmeister, Dan Frakes: Give Limit Point Software's MailCM a try. This is a contextual menu plugin/pref pane that, among other things, lets you copy a message's headers without opening or previewing the message. Of course you'll have to then paste that header into a text document or empty email message in order to examine its contents, which seems like an incredible pain in the neck to me. But then, I'm not easily spooked. The search-by-label blues Despite his elders' admonition that labeling just isn't cool, reader Jon Co would like to put Leopard's labels to good use. He writes: In Leopard is there a way to search by label? It seems the new Command- F search has dropped it as an option and I have about a thousand pictures labeled blue so I can keep them in a smart folder. Now when I open that folder, it's a collection of everything. Is there some hidden way to search by label or am I missing something? It is hidden and therefore, yes, you are missing something. When you choose File -> New Smart Folder and, in the New Smart Folder window, click the Plus (+) button, you can be forgiven for thinking that Leopard is pretty miserly about what it allows you to search for. Click the pop-up menu labeled Kind and you see just Kind, Last Opened Date, Last Modified Date, Created Date, Name Contents, and Size. Ah, but take a look at that promising Other... entry at the bottom of the list. Choose that and a rich, searchable world opens. Specifically, when the search attribute sheet appears, you want to enter Label in the Search field. Do so and you'll find that File Label appears as the sole entry. Select it and click OK. The first condition in your search now reads File Label followed by Leopard's array of label colors. Click the blue color and all items you've labeled blue will appear in the window. Click the Save button and you've got a smart folder that contains all blue-labeled items. **************************************************************************************************** 6. FIREFOX 3 RELEASE CANDIDATE 1 POSTED According the John Martellaro of the MacObserver, after an extended beta test period, the Mozilla Group has released Firefox 3, RC1 for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The release is supported in over 45 languages. New features and changes in this release include: Improvements to the user interface based on user feedback, including changes to the look and feel on Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux. Changes and fixes for new features such as the location bar autocomplete, bookmark backup and restore, full page zoom, and others, based on feedback from our community. Fixes and improvements to platform features to improve security, web compatibility and stability. Continued performance improvements: changes to our JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimization continues to improve performance over previous releases as measured by the popular SunSpider test from Apple, and in the speed of web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office. The release is immediately available for download, and has a What's New, release notes and known issues page. The final release is expected in June. Firefox is a free application. The Mac version requires OS X Tiger or later. **************************************************************************************************** 7. SPACES: GROUPING PROJECTS INSTEAD OF APPLICATIONS by Jeff Gamet Mac OS X 10.5 introduced Spaces, which lets users create virtual Desktops and overcome the limited Desktop real estate imposed by computer displays. The problem was that Spaces pushed an "application per workspace" instead of a "project per workspace" mindset, but Mac OS X 10.5.3 fixes that with little more than a mouse click. To change the default Spaces behavior so it is easier to group items based on project instead of application, do this: ? Choose Apple menu > System Preferences to launch the System Preferences application. ? Select Expose & Spaces. ? Click the Spaces tab. ? Uncheck When switching to an application, switch to a space with open windows for the application. That cryptic sounding setting makes a big change in the way Spaces works: Now Spaces will leave you in the current space when you switch applications, even if the application does not have any open windows in the currently active space. Jumping to a different space becomes an intentional action instead of a side effect from switching active applications. The upside is that it's much easier to group document windows together based on project. For example, you could have windows open in the same space for FileMaker Pro, Microsoft Word, and Safari that all relate to a single project. If you switch to a different space and then switch to Microsoft Word for a different project, you won't jump back to the first space that Word was launched in. Another bonus is that Spaces now performs in a way that's more familiar to Unix and Linux users, and it adds some flexibility to the way Spaces works for the rest of us. **************************************************************************************************** 8. MAC OS X 10.5.3 UPDATE RESOLVES NUMEROUS ISSUES by Adam C. Engst Apple has released Mac OS X 10.5.3 Update to fix a wide variety of problems in key Leopard features and to block numerous security vulnerabilities (see "Security Update 2008-003 / Mac OS X 10.5.3 Fix Flaws," 2008-05-29). Although Apple does provide more detail about what was changed than is normal for the company, the release notes are still rather terse and seldom give any indication of the severity or frequency of the bugs that were fixed. That said, it strikes me as important that 10.5.3: * Addresses an issue with stuttering video and audio playback on certain USB devices. * Fixes an issue in which certain attached hard drives may not show up in the Finder. * Addresses reliability issues with screen sharing via iChat. * Addresses stability issues when dragging large attachments into a message in Mail. But honestly, the fixes that I'm most interested in seeing are those related to wireless networking and to Time Machine, because basic network reliability is essential in today's world, and because backup software has to be rock solid or users will lose faith in it. Only two specific fixes are listed for AirPort, including improvements to 802.1X behavior and reliability, and improved reliability when using Time Capsule via AirPort. However, I've heard rumblings from users that 10.5.3 may also fix other problems that had caused network slowdowns and more. 10.5.3 includes a number of Time Machine-related fixes, including better compatibility with Time Capsule, issues related to backing up laptops running on battery power, compatibility problems with Aperture 2, reliability problems when performing a full restore, and reliable storage of Mail messages and attachments. I also gather that a problem that could cause a Time Machine sparse image file to become damaged has been fixed. In addition, the update eliminates a spurious alert message about a backup volume lacking enough free space and avoids disabling function keys after using Time Machine. The closest I can find to a new feature in 10.5.3 is additional raw image support for several unspecified cameras; see Apple's Raw Support page for Aperture for the current list. Apple historically adds support for new digital cameras in operating system updates, so this isn't surprising. What is surprising is the subsequent appearance of Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 2.1, which adds support for new cameras such as the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi, a separate 2.4 MB update that appeared shortly after the 10.5.3 update. As with any system update, we recommend making a backup of your startup hard drive before installation. When Apple applies changes to so many areas of the operating system, some incompatibilities are bound to crop up. For example, we received reports of file corruption in Photoshop CS2 and CS3 when saving image files stored on a network volume. (According to feedback in Adobe's online support forums, a workaround to the problem is to choose Save As instead of Save when saving the file.) As is always the case, there are lots of complaints about unusual problems in Apple's discussion forums, so if you're seeing crashes or other troublesome behavior, it's worth looking for fellow sufferers and possible solutions there. Mac OS X 10.5.3 Update is available via Software Update and as both delta (420 MB, for updating from Mac OS 10.5.2) and combo (536 MB, for updating from any previous version of Mac OS X 10.5) standalone updaters. The size you see in Software Update may vary, but will likely be smaller; my MacBook reported that it needed to download only 198 MB. Note that you must have at least 1.5 GB of free space to install and optimize the update - you can usually free a lot of space in use by virtual memory swap files merely by restarting. Shortly after the release of Mac OS X 10.5.3 Update, Apple also took the wraps off Mac OS X Server 10.5.3 Update, which fixes numerous issues specific to Leopard Server. Areas seeing improvements include file services, directory services, the Active Directory Plugin, client management, collaboration services, DHCP service, DNS service, mail service, Portable Home Directory synchronization, Server Assistant, System Image Utility, and Workgroup Manager. Mac OS X Server 10.5.3 Update is available via Software Update or as either delta (489 MB) or combo (632 MB) standalone updates. Servers running Mac OS X Server 10.5.3 can be administered only with the 10.5.3 versions of Server Admin Tools, which are included in Mac OS X Server 10.5.3 Update and are also available as a standalone download. **************************************************************************************************** Some articles above have been reprinted with permission from TidBITS. TidBITS has offered more than ten years of thoughtful commentary on Macintosh and Internet topics. For free email subscriptions and access to the entire TidBITS archive, visit www.tidbits.com. **************************************************************************************************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From news at welmac.org.nz Sun Jun 22 23:00:50 2008 From: news at welmac.org.nz (WelMac news) Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 01:00:50 +1200 Subject: [WelMac] Welmac News & Update 23 Jun 08 Message-ID: <577B2BBE-4222-481E-86FF-BFAA9ACCF8DD@welmac.org.nz> CONTENTS: __________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1. MEETING UPDATE 2. FREEWARE MAC MAINTENANCE APPLICATIONS 3. QUICKTIME 7.5 ADDRESSES SECURITY CONCERNS, IMOVIE AND IDVD UPDATED 4. MAC OS X SNOW LEOPARD TO FOCUS ON PERFORMANCE, NOT FEATURES 5. APPLE ANNOUNCES IPHONE 3G TO SHIP ON 11-JUL-08 ________________________________________________________________________________________________ This email news and updates newsletter will be sent each month to all WelMac members who have requested to receive such messages when they applied/reapplied for membership. To subscribe, go to . **************************************************************************************************** 1. MEETING UPDATES Wellington Meeting The next main meeting of the Wellington Macintosh Society Inc. will be held on Monday 30 June 2008. This meeting will be held in the Ante Room on the ground level of Turnbull House, 11 Bowen Street, Wellington from 7.10pm. The topic for this meeting has been altered and full details will be announced in the forthcoming issue of Capital Apple. As usual, we'll start with our Q&A session followed by a short supper before the main presentation. Kapiti Area Meeting For those members living at or near the Paraparaumu area, our next Kapiti meeting will be held at 7.10 pm on Monday 7th July 2008 (which also is Queens Birthday this year). It will be at the Rita King Cottage at St Marks Church in Rosetta Road, Raumati. The topic of the meeting will be the same as the Wellington meeting, i.e. The Dark Side of the Internet. Mac Basics Meeting This meeting is an introduction to computing on a Macintosh will be held on Monday 14 July 2008 (tonight) starting at 7pm in the Turnbull Room on the 1st floor of Turnbull House. This months meeting will look at the second topic in our series of three, using basic applications such as word processors, spreadsheets and some utility applications. Applications Special Interest Group Monday 21 July 2008 starting 7 pm in the Turnbull Room on the 1st floor of Turnbull House. These meetings will take a look at commonly used applications (software) and this month will be the second part of three looking at the uses and setup of basic databases and how you can make them work for you. **************************************************************************************************** 2. FREEWARE MAC MAINTENANCE APPLICATIONS by Tim Verpoorten There are a plethora of freeware Mac maintenance applications out there in the real world, which is a bit ironic because OSX really needs little maintenance beyond what it performs on itself. For example, if you leave your Mac on, it will perform all the daily, weekly and monthly maintenance scripts that it needs to stay healthy and alert. Even when you shut it down, OSX Tiger and Leopard are smart enough to realize that it missed running it's scripts while it was down, so it will run them as soon as you boot it back up again. Then there is the matter of defragmenting your hard drive. The Mac HFS Plus file system works well to keep your files in one piece and even if it does fragment them, the new hard drives run so well that you'll hardly notice any difference between a fragmented file or an unfragmented file. Then let's not forget that we're told to delete the cache files. Cache files were developed to speed up the OS, so when you delete them, you're defeating the purpose to begin with. The only time to delete cache files is when you're having troubles with OSX, then you can repair permissions and delete cache files until your heart's content. So after telling you all of this, why are we going to talk about freeware Mac maintenance applications? After producing the MacReviewCast podcast for three years, I've discovered that listeners want to know about maintenance programs for their Macs before any other apps. Also, if you're like me, you'd rather be certain that these maintenance tasks were done when you wanted them done. In other words, I just sleep better knowing that my Mac is the best that it can be. So after that scientific reasoning, let's take a look at the freeware programs that take care of your precious Mac. Let's start with two utilities from Titanium Software. Maintenance: http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs2/english/maintenance.html OnyX: http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs2/english/onyx_leopard.html Maintenance allows you to run several tasks of system maintenance: repair permissions, run periodic scripts, reset Spotlight's Index, rebuild the LaunchServices database, delete applications, font and system cache, and even check the status of the hard disk. It's a basic system maintenance and cleaning application. OnyX is multi-functional, they say that it handles maintenance, optimization, and personalization. Other then handling the functions that Maintenance already handles, OnyX also verifies the start-up disk and the structure of its system files, it configures some hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock, Dashboard, Expos?, Safari, Log-in window and of some of Apple's own applications, it deletes caches, and removes a certain number of files and folders that may become overbearing on the overall CPU load. There are a few other tweaks that OnyX allows you to play with, but it's shining star is still the maintenance jobs that it handles. Either Maintenance or OnyX will do a good job for you. I personally use OnyX because it does a good job of updating itself and allows me to run all the scripts and routines I need it to run and them will automatically reboot or shut down my Mac after it's finished. The next freeware application that seems to be a real favorite is, MainMenu: http://www.santasw.com MainMenu does all things that a good maintenance program should do, rebuilding your Spotlight library for faster searching, repairing permissions, cleaning caches to improve application performance, and even more advanced settings - such as enabling and disabling the Dashboard. But what makes this such a fan favorite is it's simple, and easy to use menu-bar interface. If you want an app that does it's stuff and gets out of the way, MainMenu is the one for you. IceClean: http://www.macdentro.com/MacDentro/Home.html IceClean is another freeware solution that has a lot of fans, it's new Cocoa interface make it as Mac-looking as you can get. IceClean is a powerful System Maintenance and Optimization Tool using only UNIX built-in System Tasks to help your Mac stay healthy and to keep it running smoothly. Besides the basic Unix maintenance tasks, IceClean can also monitor your network state and do traceroute. It gives you a quick and full CD/DVD erase. IceClean also contains a full system profiler. It's also important to note that like the three previous options, IceClean will update itself often and automatically to make certain your OSX is running safe and sound. AppleJack: http://applejack.sourceforge.net If you want to get your hands dirty and you are not using Leopard, AppleJack is a great maintenance app to have on your Mac. Using AppleJack, you can repair your disk, repair permissions, validate the system's preference files, and get rid of possibly corrupted cache files. The real asset in using Applejack is that you don't have to have access to your GUI to run the app, if your Mac isn't letting you log into your account, all you need to do is restart in Single User Mode (SUM), by holding down the command and s keys at start-up, and then typing applejack, or applejack auto (which will run through all the tasks automatically), or Applejack auto restart (which will also restart the computer automatically at the end of the process). I really wish a new version would be released that would work on a Leopard machine. AppleJack should be on all the older Macs, it's a great troubleshooter. There are some other maintenance applications out there that will run the normal Unix scripts, but these are the ones that you'll run into most often, and between them, you'll have more then enough options to choose from. But I didn't want to leave without a few other freeware applications that can help keep your Mac and the software on it running at it's best. Battery Health Monitor: http://sonoragraphics.com/batteryhealth.html Battery Health Monitor is a must have app for any Mac laptop owner. BHM monitors virtually every battery parameter and does it in an easy to read format. BHM will show you the Original capacity, which is an indication of the battery's storage when it was new. The current capacity indicates how much that original capacity has changed with use. The current charge shows the battery's current charge state while Charge Cycles indicates how many complete charge/discharge cycles the battery has experienced. The percentage value indicates approximately what portion of the number of total recharge cycles the battery has left. There are even more details about your battery that you'll find when you use Battery Health Monitor. I would say that anyone with a laptop should give it a try. SpeedMail: http://www.1802.it/speedmail.php When your Apple Mail seems to slow down, most of the time it can be contributed to the database. Speedmail is a terminal command that will clean up your Apple Mail database and give you a noticeable speed increase. It's nothing fancy, but it does the job. HighLoad: http://www.geniusx.net/highload Finally there's Highload. According to their website, HighLoad is comprised of a set of helpful processes designed to assist in troubleshooting your Mac. HighLoad will systematically begin to launch applications you would use when you're running your computer. This will simulate a real world high load environment to make sure items such as the virtual memory system, window server system, and other integrated processes are being utilized to the max. HighLoad will test available physical memory using memtest to make sure it is faulty free. No parameters to set or complex commands to issue, just one click. Highload will also take care of all the maintenance tasks that you need done, permissions, caches, pre-bindings and more. So after you've tried all these programs and repaired permissions and cleared caches until the cows came home, what have you really accomplished? Probably not a lot more then if you'd never ran any of them at all. That may be a point of contention with a lot of Mac users, so I say it's better to be safe then sorry and find yourself a freeware maintenance program that you can live with and use it regularly. After all, your peace of mind is worth more then the cost of a single freeware application, right? **************************************************************************************************** 3. QUICKTIME 7.5 ADDRESSES SECURITY CONCERNS, IMOVIE AND IDVD UPDATED by Jeff Carlson While the iPhone 3G and Snow Leopard grabbed everyone's attention at the Worldwide Developers Conference last week, Apple also released security and bug-fix updates to QuickTime, iMovie '08, and iDVD '08. QuickTime 7.5 tackles several security issues dealing with maliciously crafted media: PICT images, AAC-encoded media, and Indeo video. It also changes the behavior of handling URLs by revealing files in the Finder or Windows Explorer instead of launching them. (For more information on recent QuickTime security issues and how Apple is addressing them, see "QuickTime Security Enhanced with Anti- Exploitation Technologies," 2007-09-07.) QuickTime 7.5 is available via Software Update or as stand-alone downloads for the following operating systems: Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (56 MB), Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger (52.8 MB), Mac OS X 10.3 Panther (51.39 MB), and Windows XP and Vista (22.67 MB). Apple's updates for iMovie and iDVD only state that each addresses "general compatibility issues, improves overall stability, and addresses a number of other minor issues." They're also available via Software Update (once QuickTime 7.5, which is required, is installed), or as stand-alone downloads: iMovie 7.1.2 (17.9 MB) and iDVD 7.0.2 (20.27 MB). They also require Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later. **************************************************************************************************** 4. MAC OS X SNOW LEOPARD TO FOCUS ON PERFORMANCE, NOT FEATURES by Adam C. Engst At the beginning of the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote, Apple announced it would provide information about the next version of Mac OS X - code-named Snow Leopard - after the keynote. Since all the content at WWDC other than the keynote is covered by non-disclosure agreements, it seemed that Apple didn't plan to talk in public about what we could expect. However, a press release about Snow Leopard appeared late in the day revealing some details. Instead of adding marquee features like Time Machine and Spaces, Snow Leopard will instead focus on enhancing performance and reliability and lay the foundation for future features. In particular, Snow Leopard will be optimized for multi-core processors, be able to tap into the computing power of modern graphic processing units (GPUs), make it possible to address up to 16 TB of RAM, ship with QuickTime X, and provide out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 in Mail, iCal, and Address Book. A new technology code-named "Grand Central" will make it easier for developers to create applications that make the most of multi-core Macs, which should let people get more from those 8-core Mac Pros. Additional performance gains will come from support for Open Computing Language (OpenCL), a new language from Apple that supposedly lets any application access the gigaflops of computing power previously available only to graphics applications. Apple says that OpenCL is based on the C programming language and has been proposed as an open standard; the only hints about it up to now came in an interview with the Nvidia CEO. QuickTime X will reportedly optimize support for modern audio and video formats for more-efficient media playback. It seems likely that QuickTime is due for a major rewrite, given how long it has been around. Finally, Safari will receive JavaScript performance enhancements that are intended to provide an enhanced user experience for Web applications, perhaps due to a new JavaScript engine called SquirrelFish that's recently seen the light of day. The press release said that Snow Leopard is slated to ship "in about a year," and I'm sure more details will start leaking out as developers receive seeds. Overall, my initial reaction is that Snow Leopard is a very good move for Apple, because the focus on adding features in favor of performance has meant that Mac OS X has become increasingly poky for many users. And I suspect that people are no longer responding as favorably to long lists of features that they may or may not use - although I use them happily, none of the new features in Tiger or Leopard have radically changed the way I use my Mac. Apple touts Mac OS X as being rock-solid and easy to use (especially compared to Windows), so enhancing the engine under Leopard's hood could be just what many people are looking for in the next update. It can be difficult to convince users to pay for better performance and more efficient workings under the hood, but perhaps Apple will charge less than the usual $129. Or, perhaps Apple will give Snow Leopard away for free, in preparation for a Mac App Store that will give Apple a cut of every Mac application sold. But that's just crazy talk... or is it? QuickTime 7.5 is available via Software Update or as stand-alone downloads for the following operating systems: Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (56 MB), Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger (52.8 MB), Mac OS X 10.3 Panther (51.39 MB), and Windows XP and Vista (22.67 MB). Apple's updates for iMovie and iDVD only state that each addresses "general compatibility issues, improves overall stability, and addresses a number of other minor issues." They're also available via Software Update (once QuickTime 7.5, which is required, is installed), or as stand-alone downloads: iMovie 7.1.2 (17.9 MB) and iDVD 7.0.2 (20.27 MB). They also require Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later. ************************************************************************ 5. APPLE ANNOUNCES IPHONE 3G TO SHIP ON 11-JUL-08 by Adam C. Engst Ending months of speculation and rumor, Steve Jobs today announced that the first major revision to the iPhone, dubbed the iPhone 3G, will ship on 11-Jul-08 for $199 (8 GB) or $299 (16 GB). The iPhone 2.0 software, which will be a free upgrade for all current iPhone owners, will also debut on that date. iPod touch owners will be able to upgrade to the new software for $9.95. The iPhone 3G will launch initially in 22 countries, with Apple aiming for availability in more than 70 countries by the end of 2008. To illustrate the complexity in such a device, Apple said in a briefing that the iPhone 3G has 10 radios, 7 of them covering the various spectrum slices used around the world. New Hardware As you might expect from the name, the iPhone 3G supports third- generation cellular data networking that operates over eight times faster than the EDGE data support in the first iPhone model. Apple claims just a factor of 2 to 3 times faster Web-page loading and email- attachment downloading. AT&T's flavor of 3G also makes it possible to use data-based services while you're talking on the phone. The iPhone 3G's enhanced networking capabilities don't come at the expense of previous capabilities, and the device can switch among 3G, EDGE, and Wi-Fi as needed. The iPhone 3G can be set to use only 2G networks when that's necessary, which might be the case in reducing roaming charges outside of one's home carrier network. The other major hardware enhancement in the iPhone 3G is a GPS receiver, which enhances the current iPhone's cell tower triangulation and nearby Wi-Fi network sniffing to provide more accurate position and real-time location mapping and tracking over time. In the keynote, Jobs demonstrated a drive the company "recorded" down San Francisco's famous curvy Lombard Street, with the Maps application playing back the progress over the same time duration, pulsating a ring of blue as a blue dot moved. A GPS receiver can drain power from a mobile device quite rapidly - that's why they're often used while plugged in to an automobile. But in a briefing, Apple explained that the GPS receiver was engaged only while Maps was active, or when a program that called on Core Location features in the iPhone 2.0 software was using the GPS. The iPhone will ask your permission before allowing an application to use the location hardware, too. It remains to be seen if Apple or another developer will add spoken directions. Technically speaking, the iPhone 3G supports Assisted GPS, or A-GPS, which increases accuracy and improves performance by offloading some processing to a remote server. The GPS capabilities also enable photo geotagging, although the iPhone's built-in camera remains stuck at a mere 2 megapixels. Less sexy but equally useful is the iPhone 3G's improved battery life in standby and talk time. Apple provides the following estimates, although our experience with all vendor battery life estimates is that they're optimistic and seldom reflect real-world usage (since, for instance, you would likely perform a variety of these actions over the course of a normal day of iPhone usage). * Up to 300 hours of standby time * 10 hours of talk time on 2G networks * 5 hours of talk time on 3G networks * 5 (3G) or 6 (Wi-Fi) hours of Web browsing * Up to 7 hours of video playback * Up to 24 hours of audio playback The iPhone 3G uses 3G for talk when connected to 3G networks, and that reduces talk time by half, as you can see. With a switch in Settings, you can force the iPhone to use 2G networks to extend talk time or reduce data roaming bills when you're roaming away from home. Physically, the iPhone 3G is almost identical to the original iPhone. Apple's specs page shows it increasing in depth by .02 inches (.7 mm) and decreasing in weight by .1 ounces (2 grams), not something we can imagine anyone but a dock manufacturer noticing or caring about. TidBITS editor Glenn Fleishman spent a few minutes with an iPhone 3G during an Apple briefing, and found that despite the tiny changes in weight and size that it was noticeably lighter - he compared by holding his 2G iPhone in one hand and an iPhone 3G in the other - and nicer to hold. However, the original iPhone's easily scratched chrome back has been replaced with plastic - black by default, although there's an option for white in the 16 GB model. And the headphone jack is now flush with the case, something that garnered big applause from the WWDC audience. (The original model's recessed jack meant some third-party headsets wouldn't fit without use of an adapter.) Jobs claimed that the iPhone 3G also boasts dramatically better audio quality thanks to better built-in speakers. iPhone 2.0 Software Current iPhone and iPod touch owners won't have to buy an iPhone 3G to take advantage of other new features, however, since the iPhone 2.0 software that drives the iPhone 3G is also available to the earlier devices. The iPhone 2.0 software will enable users to move and delete multiple email messages at once, search for contacts, use a new scientific calculator (merely by flipping the iPhone to landscape orientation when displaying the current calculator), turn on parental controls to restrict specified content, and save images directly from a Web page or send them to your iPhone via email (from which they can then be transferred back to the Mac). Some users will particularly appreciate the capability to view (but not edit) email-attached documents from the iWork suite within the Mail program: Keynote, Pages, and Numbers, along with Microsoft PowerPoint (joining the existing support for Word and Excel documents). And, finally, the iPhone's Calendar app now supports multiple iCal calendars, instead of grouping every event into one calendar. There's a subtle change that Apple discussed in a briefing when asked about the ability to enable Wi-Fi and disable cell radios in aircraft, since many airlines in the United States will be launching on-board Internet access using Wi-Fi in the next few months. An existing Airplane Mode in Settings turns off all radios when enabled; Apple said that the iPhone 2.0 software would allow Wi-Fi to be switched back on after Airplane Mode was engaged. This would also let you extend battery life by disabling 9 of the 10 on-board radios if you didn't need voice calling. (Like cell radios, GPS receivers are illegal to use in flight.) Of course, we anticipate that the most interesting applications will come from third-party developers who have now been using the iPhone SDK (software development kit) for three months to create a wide range of programs. 250,000 people downloaded the free iPhone SDK, and 25,000 applied for the paid developer program, but only 4,000 have been admitted to the developer program so far. During the WWDC keynote, Apple brought a number of developers on stage to show their applications and make the expected platitudes about how wonderful it was to develop for the iPhone. Sega, Pangea Software, and Digital Legends Entertainment showed off games that took advantage of the built-in accelerometer and gestures; eBay demoed a native application for bidding in auctions; two companies presented medical applications; the Associated Press and MLB.com showed news-related programs; and the social-networking site Loopt used the iPhone 3G's location capabilities to show the location of your friends. The developer who garnered the most applause, however, was a lone developer named Mark Terry from Moo Cow Music, whose Band program lets iPhone users mix songs using a variety of instruments. All iPhone applications, free or commercial, will be available via the new App Store; see "More iPhone App Store Details Revealed" (2008-06-09) for more. Pricing and Availability Jobs acknowledged that one of the major challenges Apple faced with the original iPhone was the price, which started out at $599 for an 8 GB model. The first price cut dropped that to $399 (see the details at the end of "Apple Introduces iPod touch, Wi-Fi iTunes Store, and New iPods," 2007-09-10), and Apple has now reduced the price yet again, cutting it in half to $199 in the United States, and he said it would cost the same or less worldwide. That's for a black 8 GB model; for 16 GB of RAM, you'll pay $299, and you'll get the choice of a black or white back. Although it's hard to argue with Apple dropping the iPhone's price by $200, a fact that came out only after the keynote is that 3G service plans will increase by $10 per month for personal plans, and $25 per month for business plans. That makes the cheapest package $70 per month. Historically, Apple has received a share of revenue, but Ars Technica is reporting that the revenue-sharing deal hasn't been extended to the new model, along with the fact that current iPhone users who want to upgrade will be able to do so by starting a new 2- year contract, not adding another 2 years on top of the remaining contract commitment. Instead of the revenue sharing deal, AT&T is subsidizing the price of iPhones, according to the Associated Press, a standard cellular-phone pricing arrangement. (Don't cry for AT&T: with the cheapest personal service plan, they'll realize about $500 more in revenue over two years with the higher fee and no revenue sharing than they did with the 2G iPhone.) The iPhone 3G will be available in 22 countries on 11-Jul-08. Interestingly, the online Apple Store is not accepting pre-orders; it merely points to retail Apple Store and AT&T locations where the iPhone will be available. What's Next? This product announcement was perhaps the least-well-kept of Apple's secrets since Steve Jobs returned to the company many years ago. Both the 3G and GPS additions have been discussed for ages, and Apple itself raised the curtain on the iPhone SDK and App Store months ago. So in some sense, despite the massive amount of anticipation, there's a slight letdown in not being wowed by entirely unanticipated features or in Apple not delivering on every rumored feature, such as a forward- facing video camera for iChat video chatting. (Damn those rumors for raising our hopes!) That does leave room for a third-generation iPhone to appear next year, though who knows what Apple will call it, given that the _second-generation_ is the iPhone _3G_. **************************************************************************************************** Some articles above have been reprinted with permission from TidBITS. TidBITS has offered more than ten years of thoughtful commentary on Macintosh and Internet topics. For free email subscriptions and access to the entire TidBITS archive, visit www.tidbits.com. **************************************************************************************************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From news at welmac.org.nz Sun Jul 13 20:19:46 2008 From: news at welmac.org.nz (WelMac news) Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:19:46 +1200 Subject: [WelMac] Welmac News & Update 13 Jul 08 Message-ID: <820594CA-21A9-489F-9326-4070D9AC042E@welmac.org.nz> CONTENTS: __________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1. MEETING UPDATE 2. APPLE INTRODUCES THE NEW IPHONE 3G 3. ITUNES 7.7 RELEASED IN PREPARATION FOR IPHONE 2.0 4. MAC OS X 10.5.4 AND SECURITY UPDATE 2008-004 FIX BUGS 5. CRITICAL UPDATES FOR MICROSOFT OFFICE 2008 AND 2004 6. MAC 911 - SOLUTIONS TO YOUR MOST VEXING MAC PROBLEMS 7. MAC FREEWARE FOR YOUR CHILDREN 8. PODCASTER INTERVIEW: VICTOR CAJIAO ________________________________________________________________________________________________ This email news and updates newsletter will be sent each month to all WelMac members who have requested to receive such messages when they applied/reapplied for membership. To subscribe, go to . **************************************************************************************************** 1. MEETING UPDATES Wellington Meeting The next main meeting of the Wellington Macintosh Society Inc. will be held on Monday 28 July 2008. This meeting will be held in the Ante Room on the ground level of Turnbull House, 11 Bowen Street, Wellington from 7.10pm. The topic for this meeting will centre around the recent release of the new 3G iPhone in New Zealand. As usual, we'll start with our Q&A session followed by a short supper before the main presentation. Kapiti Area Meeting For those members living at or near the Paraparaumu area, our next Kapiti meeting will be held at 7.10 pm on Monday 4th August 2008 (which also is Queens Birthday this year). It will be at the Rita King Cottage at St Marks Church in Rosetta Road, Raumati. The topic of the meeting will be the same as the Wellington meeting, i.e. The iPhone. Mac Basics Meeting This meeting is an introduction to computing on a Macintosh will be held on Monday 14 July 2008 (tonight) starting at 7pm in the Turnbull Room on the 1st floor of Turnbull House. This months meeting will look at the second topic in our series of three, using basic applications such as word processors, spreadsheets and some utility applications. Applications Special Interest Group Monday 21 July 2008 starting 7 pm in the Turnbull Room on the 1st floor of Turnbull House. These meetings will take a look at commonly used applications (software) and this month will be the second part of three looking at the uses and setup of basic databases and how you can make them work for you. **************************************************************************************************** 2. APPLE INTRODUCES THE NEW IPHONE 3G Apple started selling the new iPhone 3G on July 11 in 22 countries including New Zealand. The new iPhone combines all the revolutionary features of iPhone with 3G networking that is twice as fast as the first generation iPhone, built-in GPS for expanded location based mobile services, and iPhone 2.0 software which includes support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and runs the hundreds of third party applications already built with the recently released iPhone SDK. In New Zealand, the new iPhone 3G 8GB model is priced at $199 and $250 per month up to $979 for the for the phone only. The 16GB model is priced at $349 and $250 per month up to $1129 for the for the phone only and all plans are for a minimum of 24 months . ?Just one year after launching the iPhone, we?re launching the new iPhone 3G that is twice as fast at half the price,? said Steve Jobs, Apple?s CEO. ? iPhone 3G supports Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync right out of the box, runs the incredible third party apps created with the iPhone SDK, and will be available in more than 70 countries around the world this year.? iPhone 3G gives users ever faster access to the Internet and email over their cellular network with quad-band GSM and tri-band HSDPA for voice and data connectivity around the world. iPhone 3G supports Wi- Fi, 3G and EDGE networks and automatically switches between them to ensure the fastest possible download speeds. The new iPhone 3G also makes it easier to multi-task with simultaneous voice and data communications, so with iPhone 3G you can browse the web, get map directions, or check your email while you are on a call. iPhone 3G includes the new iPhone 2.0 software with both the iPhone SDK and key enterprise features such as support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync to provide over-the-air push email, contact and calendar syncing as well as remote wipe and Cisco IPsec VPN for encrypted access to corporate networks. The iPhone SDK allows developers to create amazing applications that leverage the iPhone?s groundbreaking Multi-Touch user interface, animation technology, accelerometer and GPS technology on the world?s most advanced mobile platform. iPhone 3G includes the new App Store, providing iPhone users with native applications in a variety of categories including games, business, news, sports, health, reference and travel. The App Store on iPhone works over cellular networks and Wi-Fi, which means it is accessible from just about anywhere, so you can purchase and download applications wirelessly and start using them instantly. Some applications are even free and the App Store notifies you when application updates are available. The App Store will be available in 62 countries at launch. Additional features available with the iPhone 2.0 software include the ability to do real-time mapping and track your progress with GPS technology, mass move and delete multiple email messages, search for contacts, access a new scientific calculator, turn on parental control restrictions for specified content, save images directly from a web page or email them to your iPhone and easily transfer them back to your photo library on your Mac or PC. iPhone 3G delivers an amazing 10 hours of talk time on 2G networks and 5 hours using 3G, with up to 5 to 6 hours of web browsing, up to 7 hours for video playback and up to 24 hours for audio playback. iPhone 3G takes advantage of MobileMe, a new Internet service that pushes email, contacts, and calendars from an online ?cloud? to native applications on iPhone, iPod touch, Macs and PCs. With MobileMe email, messages are pushed instantly to iPhone, removing the need to manually check email and wait for downloads, and push keeps contacts and calendars continuously up-to-date so changes made on one device are automatically updated on other devices. With iPhone, you can even snap a photo and post it directly to a MobileMe Gallery to share with friends and family. **************************************************************************************************** 3. ITUNES 7.7 RELEASED IN PREPARATION FOR IPHONE 2.0 by Jeff Carlson The day before the iPhone 3G and iPhone 2.0 software are due to appear, Apple has released iTunes 7.7. The update adds support for iPhone 2.0 syncing and the App Store when it becomes available. Also added is support for a new Remote application for the iPhone and iPod touch that lets you control iTunes from those devices. But wait, you can get a sneak peak at the App Store now! After installing the iTunes 7.7 update (available via Software Update or as a 48.32 MB download), perform a search for an iPhone application name (such as Twitterific), click the application name, and you'll be able to browse the entire store and download applications. Currently the iTunes 7.7 update is available only for Mac OS X 10.3.9, Mac OS X 10.4.9 or later, or Mac OS X 10.5 or later. **************************************************************************************************** 4. MAC OS X 10.5.4 AND SECURITY UPDATE 2008-004 FIX BUGS by Jeff Carlson Apple released Mac OS X 10.5.4 today, a bug-fix update that touches on several areas. Recent security updates are included (though the recent ARDAgent vulnerability has not yet been addressed; see "How to Protect Yourself from the New Mac OS X Trojans," 2008-06-25). If you want to take advantage of the security updates without installing the operating system update, you can download Security Update 2008-004 for Intel (128 MB) and PowerPC (80 MB); security updates for Mac OS X 10.5 Server are also available for Intel (165 MB) and PowerPC (127 MB). Designers will be relieved to discover that a problem with saving and reopening Adobe Creative Suite 3 files located on remote servers has been resolved. A pair of AirPort fixes deal with reliability of 5 GHz networks and poor performance when using Logic Studio or MainStage. According to Apple's release notes, iCal sees the most improvements, such as resolving problems when deleting events, copying and pasting attendees between events, and reliability of shared meetings. Fixes in Safari center on improving performance and solving problems loading secure Web pages. Apple is still grappling with the way Spaces operates, fixing a problem where the Finder would become the active application when switching to a space instead of the program residing in that space, as well as an issue dealing with assigning applications to spaces in the Spaces preference pane. This update also includes a number of new security fixes, including major updates to patch recent vulnerabilities discovered in the Ruby programming language. Two fixes close holes that could allow an attacker to take over your computer if you were to visit a malicious Web site using Safari. One of those vulnerabilities is exploitable only if you have the Safari preference to "Open 'safe' files after downloading" set - this is a valuable reminder to disable that preference in Safari's General preference pane. The Mac OS X 10.5.4 update also adds raw format support for more cameras, fixes a problem where X11 may not be completely installed, and improves L2TP VPN client reliability. The update is available via Software Update or as standalone downloads: Mac OS X 10.5.4 Update (88 MB); Mac OS X 10.5.4 Combo Update (561 MB); Mac OS X Server 10.5.4 Update (133 MB); Mac OS X Server Combo 10.5.4 Update (677 MB). ************************************************************************ 5. CRITICAL UPDATES FOR MICROSOFT OFFICE 2008 AND 2004 by Adam C. Engst We've been waiting for these! The just-released Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.1 Update fixes a variety of troublesome bugs, some introduced in the previous update. And, the Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.5.0 Update fixes some crashing bugs, improves compatibility with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, and includes all the updates previously released for Office 2004, so new installations of Office 2004 don't have to be updated 19 times to be brought up to date. **Office 2008 Changes** -- Most notably (from my perspective, anyway), Word and Excel documents downloaded from the Web or attached to email messages will now open when double-clicked. Yay! This has been driving me bonkers whenever I tried to open a Word file attached to an email message in Eudora. Also fixed in Word 2008 is a bug that would cause spaces to be lost when opening a document created in or saved by Word 2008 or Word 2007 in Windows - I didn't run into that one, thankfully. Other fixes preserve items in Notebook Layout documents when the document is converted from .docx to .doc, preserve font size settings for text in tables, and address a problem in saving .doc documents that contain an Area or Filled Radar chart. Excel 2008 also features numerous improvements, including accepting international decimal separators for error bars, no longer duplicating embedded movies when workbooks are saved in .xls format, and improving PivotTable reports. Excel's reliability has been enhanced in a variety of situations, such as when chart data is updated, when you reference or link to a sheet name that resembles a cell reference, and at times when you calculate or edit a formula. PowerPoint 2008 and Entourage 2008 see fewer changes. This update fixes a problem that would cause PowerPoint to take a long time to open presentations that use certain fonts, and also fixes a nasty bug that would cause Entourage to crash when you wake the Mac from sleep. The Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.1 Update requires Mac OS X 10.4.9 or later, and that you have already installed the Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 1 (see "Microsoft Fixes Office 2008 Bugs, Announces VBA Return," 2008-05-19). It's a 153.3 MB download, and is available from Microsoft's Web site or via the Microsoft AutoUpdate utility launched by choosing Check for Updates from any Office 2008 application. Once again, kudos to Microsoft for excellent release notes. **Office 2004 Changes** -- For Office 2004, which Microsoft appears to be maintaining more actively than is usual for a previous release, the 11.5.0 update improves compatibility with documents in the Open XML format used by Office 2008 and Office 2007 in Windows, and it also fixes a problem whereby the installer would find copies of Office backed up by Time Machine. In Word 2004, Microsoft fixed a number of crashing bugs, including several that could occur during typical operation, one that could happen when you pasted content from an Office 2008 document into Word 2004, and one that kicked in when getting the properties of a hyperlink via AppleScript. Other fixes include improved text display when you change the size of table columns and cosmetic improvements to the Page Setup dialog in Leopard. Similarly, Excel 2004 receives fixes for errors when pasting data from Excel 2008; for crashing bugs related to opening workbooks containing a shape, a SmartArt graphic, or a text box created in Excel 2008 or Excel 2007; for saving paper sizes for documents saved in both Excel 2004 and Excel 2008; and for the inability to open Excel 2007 documents via the Open dialog. Finally, the update fixes a problem in PowerPoint 2004 that could cause crashes when opening presentations with a large number of slides, or when pasting content from an open Office 2008 application running on an Intel-based Mac into a PowerPoint 2004 presentation. The Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.5.0 Update requires Mac OS X 10.2.8 or later, and as I noted previously, includes all previous Office 2004 updates. It's a 58.9 MB update, and is available either via the Office 2004 version of Microsoft AutoUpdate or as a standalone download. **************************************************************************************************** 6. MAC 911 - SOLUTIONS TO YOUR MOST VEXING MAC PROBLEMS Directly accessing the Downloads folder Reader Charles Bilkin is unsatisfied with a Safari feature, he writes: When I used Safari running under Tiger, my downloads would go to the Desktop. Now that I'm using Leopard, they go into the Downloads folder. I know that my Desktop is cleaner now, but I don't like having to open my Downloads folder whenever I want to get a file I've downloaded. Is there some way to turn this off? Sure, just open Safari's preferences, click the General tab, and, from the Save Downloaded Files To pop-up menu, choose Other. In the sheet that appears, navigate to the Desktop folder in your user folder and click Select. Files you download will appear on the Desktop. But before you do that, consider this: Perhaps you can have both easy access to your downloaded files and a clearer Desktop. Like so: Enter an address like this in Safari's Address field: file:///Users/yourusername/Downloads (Naturally yourusername would be the name of your user account.) Drag the small icon of the Downloads folder that appears just to the left of the address into the Bookmarks Bar and name it something like Downloads. Now when you want quick access to files you've downloaded, just click this new Downloads bookmark. When you do, the Downloads folder opens in the Finder. Similarly, in Safari's Downloads window you can quickly get to your downloaded file by clicking the Magnifying Glass icon next to its name. The Finder comes to the fore with the Downloads window open and your file highlighted (unless it's a disk-image file that was automatically opened, in which case clicking this icon takes you to the window that shows you all the mounted volumes on your Mac). I also make it a point to drag the Downloads folder into a Finder window's Sidebar so that I can quickly open it from any Finder window. Sound off in specific applications Reader Alec Saunders sounds off on turning sound off for specific applications. He writes: I was wondoring if there was a way to disable sound in certain applications. Specifically in Safari so I don't have to hear the sound in games. The cheap and easy way is to just bang on the Mac keyboard's Mute key when you have Safari before you. Regrettably, this shuts everything up, which is probably not what you want. JoeSoft's $50 Hear, in addition to enhancing your Mac's audio in a wide variety of ways (equalizer and 3D effects included), provides a mixer component that allows you to separately adjust the volume of all the applications running on your Mac. In my book, $50 is a lot to pay for just this single feature, but I also like its other features which helps me live with the price tag. Adding 802.11n to older iMac Reader Frank Blank has drawn a blank in regard to upgrading the wireless connection on an older iMac. He writes: I have three Macs networked at home through an Airport Extreme Base Station. The MacBook and Intel iMac communicate like greased lightning. Communication with the 2.1GHz iMac G5 is much much slower. Since the laptop, Intel iMac, and AirPort Base Station utilize 802.11n, and the iMac G5 uses 802.11g, is there a way to upgrade the older iMac to the faster wireless speed? The least expensive way to do this is to eschew wireless on the old iMac and run an Ethernet cable from the Base Station to the iMac. Your iMac's network performance will increase dramatically and its "g" wireless won't slow down the rest of the wireless network. On the other hand, perhaps you don't feel like completely rearranging your home so that the Base Station and iMac sit near each other. If not, you can upgrade the iMac to 802.11n, but not internally. Apple's n- flavored wireless cards don't work with older iMacs. You can, however, add 802.11n via USB. For example, Other World Computing sells the MaxPower 802.11n/g/b Wireless USB 2.0 Stick Adapter for $50. Jack it into a USB 2.0 port, install the driver, choose it as the wireless adapter you'd like to use, and your older iMac is communicating at 802.11n speeds. In case of emergency If you've scanned the headlines lately or simply live downwind of the central portion of the 31st state, you're aware that far too much of California has been ablaze in the last month. It happens that I live darned close to a couple of these hot-spots and, having packed the car twice now with the idea of fleeing with family and felines when the reverse 911 call comes in, it's natural that my attention has been increasingly devoted to emergency preparedness--and that includes the protection and salvation of my data. When Fire 1 ignited about a month ago, my office was a mess. I had files scattered across seven separate hard drives and three different computers. Had I been in a position where I had to leave Right Now, every bit of data I owned would have been lost. Fortunately I had time so I chose the brute-force technique--I threw all the computers in the car along with a duffel-bag full of hard drives. You can imagine the "You say you do this kind of thing for a living?" look I got from my wife who, wisely, had her most important data backed up onto a single drive that she'd stuffed into her purse. Last weekend's Fire 2--closer than the first--saw little improvement on my part. Although I'd procured a new 750GB drive to feed Time Machine--and thus had a readily grabbable backup of my current work files, email, contacts, and calendars--the files I really wanted remained parsed out among a host of internal and external hard drives. And by "really wanted" I don't mean MacUser Help Folder columns from 1997, a Breen's Bungalow video from 2000, or even the iTunes-procured copy of Noel Harrison's Life is a Dream. What I do mean is my photos and home movies. I can replace music. I can let go of a couple of decades worth of work. I can buy another computer. But I can't replace the images of a child's first years or a parent's last. And to risk losing those images to a natural disaster--even one as natural and predictable as a hard drive crash--because I'm disorganized is just stupid. So in the "fool me once/fool me twice" vein, I'm changing my ways, in these ways: Gathered memories I have multiple iPhoto Library archives scattered about. I've now copied those archives to a single hard drive. Similarly I've copied my Aperture libraries to that same drive. In addition, I've used Leopard's Smart Folder feature to seek out all Camera Raw images and copied those to that same drive. Yes, I have duplicate files. At some point I may sort through the images and remove the duplicates. For now, I'm happy to know that I have all my images within easy reach. Home movies are easier as I haven't made a ton of them. A Smart Folder that looks for files with the extension .DV with a file size over 500MB nicely rounded up the movies I was after. Out of the house Fat lot of good a backup hard drive does me if a tornado whips it into the next county. While on-site backups are fine, you need to get your data off-site as well. One way to do that is to lug hard drives from Location A to Location B. Another is to burn through your bandwidth like there's no tomorrow (cuz, who knows, maybe there isn't) and upload your most precious data to a server somewhere in The Cloud. Like a lot of .Mac members, I have an iDisk that goes largely unused. Currently .Mac members are provided with up to 10GB of storage and, when MobileMe launches, that limit moves to 20GB. With a .Mac membership comes a copy of Apple's Backup application--one that can be configured to store items on your iDisk. At first I vowed to go through my photos, pare them down to the absolute keepers, and then upload those keepers to my iDisk via Backup. But then I realized I had too much stuff--20GB just wouldn't do. So I explored other online options and came up with Mozy. This is an online service that allows you to upload an unlimited amount of data for $4.95 per computer per month (personal use only, for this price). It includes a simple client (available for Mac or Windows) that lets you choose common files and folders (Address Book, Documents Folder, Keychains, and Microsoft Word Documents, for example) as well as select specific files and folders. It includes a scheduling component so your files are backed up automatically. And yes, it takes a long time to upload your files--like days long if you're dealing with dozens of gigabytes. Aperture ho! I like iPhoto a lot. The current version is fast and it provides just enough tools that I can perform nice looking edits without a lot of bother. But its ability to back up your pictures is primitive. When you query iPhoto's Help about backing up your iPhoto library you're offered the option of using Time Machine or dragging your library to another disk or burning it to CD or DVD. I also like Aperture a lot and its ability to create vaults of my photos and easily save them to another drive has won me over. I've imported my iPhoto libraries into the program and have since saved them as part of an Aperture vault, which I'm in the process of uploading to Mozy. A UPS that makes sense A couple of years ago I got smart and installed two uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) in my office. And then I got dumb and plugged devices into them willy nilly. Last weekend, PG&E cut the power to aid the firefighters. "No problem," I smugly thought, "I've got UPS." Right. That is until the laser printer plugged into one drained it within seconds and the two Macs, one PC, one scanner, six hard drives, and powered speakers did the same to the other. And that was a problem. And it was a problem because with the TV out of commission and our local NPR stations loath to interrupt A Prairie Home Companion to alert their listeners about the proximity and direction of the fire, the Internet was my best source of information--a source I couldn't get to because I had no power. So, while the power was out I occupied my time by unplugging every device in my office and creating a smarter UPS setup. And it goes like this: I will no longer print with the power out. The laser printer is now plugged into the UPS' surge suppressor, but won't draw power from the battery. UPS 1 is now jacked into my DSL broadband modem, AirPort Extreme Base Station, Ethernet switch, and telephone. And that's it. If the power goes down, I can still access the Internet. UPS 2 will power my Mac Pro, monitors, and external hard drives. When the power goes out, I will unmount those external hard drives and then switch them off. This seems a better policy than letting them suddenly die when their juice is cut. In all likelihood, I'll switch this computer off when the power goes out. I can do that because I've vowed to keep my laptop plugged in whenever it's in the office. When there's no power in the office, I'll use the laptop. If I'm feeling particularly miserly, I'll switch it off as well and use my iPhone and iPod touch to access the Web and email. Sheesh... Sure, this has all been a bother, but it's a bother that I've left unaddressed for far too long. Maybe you have as well. It's going to be a long, hot--and, at this rate, smokey--summer. Unpleasant as it has been (far more so for those who've dealt with it in a more tragically direct way) I feel better knowing that I'm more prepared to deal with it. **************************************************************************************************** 7. MAC FREEWARE FOR YOUR CHILDREN So far we've discussed mostly freeware that you would use in your day to day work on the Mac, but what about freeware for the family? Specifically, what about some Mac freeware for your children? One of the most requested topics that I receive for the MacReviewCast.com podcast is for family friendly freeware. One of the strengths of the Mac has always been in the field of education and home usability. Many young people were trained on a Mac in school, and as they grew up they kept a Mac in their home. This all led to a strong software base for educational freeware on the Mac, so let's look at a few of these apps for a variety of different ages. Let's start with the youngest. My grandson is 7 months old and he loves nothing better then to sit on my lap while I'm at the Mac Pro and bang on the keys and the mouse. As you may have already guessed, my grandson can get away with anything he wants when he's around Papa, but I'm not about to let him loose on my keyboard and mouse without some type of protection for my files. The answer is Baby Banger. Baby Banger: http://www.goodeast.com With a simple keystroke, all the keys will show colorful shapes and images when pressed and some even give you sounds. The more they bang away on the keyboard, the more shapes and colors appear. You can add your own pictures and images if you want, or just use what the application gives you. This little app has given my grandson hours of joy and me, hours of peace. As your children grow older, you'll find that many of the same games that we've enjoyed in our youth have timeless appeal. Games like The Match game or a jigsaw puzzle will be hits with children forever. That's why you should visit this website for two great freeware games, FishDog Jigsaw and FishDog Match: http://fishdog.net Just like their name suggests, FishDog software has taken two classics and turned them into Mac freeware. They are true to the originals and just as much fun. In FishDog Match you match letters, numbers and pictures. This allows for several years of enjoyment. In FishDog Jigsaw, they use pictures of animals which all children enjoy. Thank you FishDog. Another great Mac software developer is Koingo Software. They make some wonderful shareware utilities but still have time for some fun Mac freeware. These holiday favorites can be downloaded at: Christmas Super Frog: http://www.koingosw.com/products/christmassuperfrog.php Christmas Crisis: http://www.koingosw.com/products/christmascrisis.php Both of these games are for a little older age group and the games can be best described by their developer. In Christmas Crisis, Santa has fallen sick this winter holiday. Ms. Claus has been cooking some of her most powerful chicken soup, but even that's not powerful enough to cure Santa from his perilous cold. He won't be able to make his first deliveries until much later than usual -- but that is too late to deliver all of the presents. You and other elves have been chosen to help make up for Santa's missed time! Fly over cities and drop presents down chimneys. Maintain a 70% success rate to save Christmas! Watch out for planes - you don't want to crash! In Christmas Super Frog, Santa's sleigh has broken down, scattering his gifts all around the town! Now it is up to you to recover all the missing presents before Christmas arrives. As the name sounds, the game resembles the original Frogger in many ways. While we're talking about frogs, here's another fun game by the name of BullFrog from Outer Level Software. BullFrog: http://outerlevel.com/bullfrog In this game you play a BullFrog who's house has been invaded by bugs. Buzzing, flapping, and biting. Bugs now plague every corner of your world and irritate you at every turn. Eat all those pesky bugs to return peace and quiet to your lovely home. But, you must eat all those bugs before time runs out or your home will be forever theirs. Let's keep looking at freeware games for the kids. Here's one that may appeal to the older children in the house, it's from RAMDream games, and it's called The Gnome Herder. The Gnome Herder: http://www.ramdreams.com/gnome/GnomeHerderMain.html You can either play this 3D game online from the website, or download the Mac OSX stand-alone version for your computer. Now if that's not enough, RAMDream games have two more 3D adventure games that you're welcome to download or play via the website. They're called The Snowmen and the Crown, and The Bows of Shoga-La. They all have smooth 3D graphics and are fun for kids of all ages. What more can you ask for free? Now that we've covered some freeware games, I'd be a bad parent and grandparent if I didn't include a few apps that were more learning based. The one thing we all fear about having our child on the computer is when they actually go online. Besides the obvious predator situations we hear about everyday, we also have MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and other websites to worry about. Why not replace the Firefox, or Safari browser that adults use and give your child a browser that you know is safe? Scavenger: http://whimsplucky.com/Scavenger/About.html Scavenger features a fun user interface free of the OS X look. It uses Apple's built in Safari engine to render pages. Any plug-ins you have installed in Safari, Scavenger can take advantage of them. Scavenger also contains bookmarks to kid-friendly sites like Noggin, Nickelodeon and others. Part of the reason Scavenger can keep your kids safe is that it restricts itself from going to any other site except those you have on the home page. Scavenger does not allow for downloading files. Any files on the internet will need to be installed by you using another browser. Scavenger is a great app to help you control your kids browsing experience. But, remember, no piece of technology can take the place of good parenting, ultimately it's your responsibility. What about the child that has an artist inside just waiting to burst out? There is a wonderful drawing program for children in the elementary level. It's called Tux Paint. Tux Paint: http://www.tuxpaint.org Tux Paint is a colorful drawing application that combines an easy-to- use interface, fun sound effects, and an encouraging cartoon mascot who guides children as they use the program. Kids are presented with a blank canvas and a variety of drawing tools to help them be creative.These drawing tools include brushes, stamps, lines, shapes, text, magic tools, erasers and undo. Tux Paint has been around the Mac community for years and has developed into a full featured, solid application that could easily become shareware if desired. Mac developers have not forgotten about the educators along with the pupils. Moodle is an open source course management system. Moodle: http://moodle.org Moodle can help educators create effective online learning communities. From one pupil to thousands, Moodle handles it all. Moodle is a software package for producing internet-based courses and web sites. The feature list is pages long and the capabilities are endless. Use as much of the program as you need or as little as you need. Do yourself a favor and visit the Moodle website yourself and you'll be as impressed as I am with the possibilities. Let's finish this list with an app that your High School student might just crack a smile and thank you for finding it for them. It's called Trigonometry and it's from VoJou Software. Trigonometry: http://www.vojousoftware.com The name says it all. The app is a small and simple to understand program to learn or teach Trigonometry. If I remember my High School days, anything that can help with Trig is worth it's weight in gold. Especially if it's free. That should do it for this article. We've only scratched the surface. The Mac had it's roots in the educational system and for many years it was the king of the family computers. Those were great developers and now a new wave have taken the reins and given us some fantastic freeware to help our children grow and learn. **************************************************************************************************** 8. PODCASTER INTERVIEW: VICTOR CAJIAO by D. Popeck Victor Cajiao first published the Typical Mac User podcast on New Year?s Day 2006. Two and a half years later and 136 podcasts later, he is still going strong. On his web site one can find links to subscribe to this fun podcast is published biweekly and covers Apple news, new products, hardware and software. As an added bonus he has started releasing short videos from his Flip Mino on the web site, so be sure to check it out! Lucky for us, Victor was nice enough to take the time to answer a few questions. Q: What made you decide to do a podcast? I was switching to the Mac and I wanted to share my experience of learning about Mac, Apple and to do it in a way that I would be a contributor not just a consumer of information. The show allows me to continue to learn and grow while I learn about all things in the Apple community, software, hardware and how ?The Cult of Mac? is about people coming together and sharing their knowledge. That fits perfectly into my life and how I can contribute to it. Q: Despite the name of your podcast, you are not a typical user. Can you tell us a little about your IT background? Well I was very ?Typical? when I started the show, and although I may not be ?Typical? today, I still tend to very much relate to the early days of my switching to the Mac and what things baffled me, and what I wanted to learn. My IT background goes back about sixteen years where I have been anything from a systems administrator, a developer of IVR?s and Automatic Call Distributors to a Director of development, QA \QC. This experience in IT, managing and teaching have served me very well in doing the podcast and in delivering a show that I would want to listen to. Q: With so many episodes completed, do you have any long-term goals for the podcast? Well to have the willingness to keep on doing it. It?s sometimes difficult because there are so many wonderful Mac related podcasts. I often have to really wonder and reflect as to whether I?m contributing something unique or just repeating what other do. I try to inject my personality and experience to the podcast in order to keep it unique. I?ll keep it going as long as I enjoy it. Of course another goal is to continue to grow sponsorship, as the money I make from the show all goes into new gear, software and all things show related. I have been able to start a business Typical Media Group LLC, because of the podcast, and that allows me to provide consulting services on all sorts of new media related content. Q: Audience participation is a game-changer. How have the live- streaming programs been for you? I recently had to put the live aspect of the show on hiatus while I look for another way to do the live shows. They have been super fulfilling and I miss doing them. There is nothing like two way interaction in new media, I?m so much more interested in what all of you have to say, than hearing my own voice. I will find a different way to do live content again. Perhaps not every week like I did for 18 months, however it?s too much fun to let it go. For now I UStream myself almost every weekend and lately I have been doing some almost daily videos called Victor?s Mino Moments, to keep in touch. I call it that because they are done on a Flip Mino camera in my car while I drive home. I post them on the blog and they have gotten great reaction. I?m such a dork Q: After WWDC I see MobileMe as a potential break out service. ?Exchange for the rest of us? is a major boost to iPhone sales. What are your thoughts on MobileMe (was .Mac)? I think if Apple has the proper infrastructure to keep it available then it will be great. I have always been a dot Mac member, however the dot Mac service is not always available. Apple has to make that service completely solid so that it can be yet another gateway for people who don?t use Apple products today (other than the iPhone and iPods). If they can pull off Mobile Me with the ease of use, and dependency that is associated with other Apple products it will be yet another tool in the ?Halo Affect? to draw more people into Mac computers and all things Apple. Typical Mac User Podcast The latest podcast, TMUP 136: It?s all about MIDI with David Sparks, was released Tuesday, July 1, 2008. To listen, visit the site and either use the web player or, better yet, subscribe in iTunes. **************************************************************************************************** Some articles above have been reprinted with permission from TidBITS. TidBITS has offered more than ten years of thoughtful commentary on Macintosh and Internet topics. For free email subscriptions and access to the entire TidBITS archive, visit www.tidbits.com. **************************************************************************************************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From news at welmac.org.nz Sun Aug 17 22:59:08 2008 From: news at welmac.org.nz (WelMac news) Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:59:08 +1200 Subject: [WelMac] Welmac News & Update 17 Aug 08 Message-ID: CONTENTS: __________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1. MEETING UPDATE 2. APPLE WORTH MORE THAN GOOGLE 3. EXPLAINING APPLE'S FLASH KILLER STRATEGY 4. APPLE PREMIERES MOVIES ON THE ITUNES STORE IN AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND 5. VMWARE FUSION 2 BETA 2 ADDS SIGNIFICANT FEATURES 6. IPHONE APPS THAT GO BEYOND ENTERTAINMENT 7. FIVE ITUNES 7.7.1 BUG FIXES DETAILED ________________________________________________________________________________________________ This email news and updates newsletter will be sent each month to all WelMac members who have requested to receive such messages when they applied/reapplied for membership. To subscribe, go to . **************************************************************************************************** 1. MEETING UPDATES Wellington Meeting The next main meeting of the Wellington Macintosh Society Inc. will be held on Monday 25 August 2008. This meeting will be held in the Ante Room on the ground level of Turnbull House, 11 Bowen Street, Wellington from 7.10pm. The topic for this meeting will be Graphics applications on the Cheap. As usual, we'll start with our Q&A session followed by a short supper before the main presentation. Kapiti Area Meeting For those members living at or near the Paraparaumu area, our next Kapiti meeting will be held at 7.10 pm on Monday 1st September 2008 (which also is Queens Birthday this year). It will be at the Rita King Cottage at St Marks Church in Rosetta Road, Raumati. The topic of the meeting will be the same as the Wellington meeting, i.e. Graphics applications on the Cheap. Mac Basics Meeting This meeting is an introduction to computing on a Macintosh will be held on Monday 8 September 2008 (tonight) starting at 7pm in the Turnbull Room on the 1st floor of Turnbull House. This months meeting will look at the first topic in our series of three, Mac OSX operating system and its file structure and using the Finder to navigate your way around your computer. Applications Special Interest Group Monday 18 August 2008 (TONIGHT) starting 7 pm in the Turnbull Room on the 1st floor of Turnbull House. These meetings will take a look at commonly used applications (software) and this month will be the third part of three looking at the uses and setup of basic databases and how you can make them work for you. **************************************************************************************************** 2. APPLE WORTH MORE THAN GOOGLE Bryan Chaffin of the MacObserver electronic newsletter noted recently that Apple Inc.'s market capitalization (market cap) has surpassed Google's, with the company having a market cap of US$158.8 billion, some $1.6 billion higher than Google's market cap of 157.2 billion. Apple's stock has been on a run lately rising more than $15 per share to close at $179.30. Google's shares have also been on a heater of sorts, rising more than $25 per share to close at $500.03 per share. For those keeping score at home, Apple's market cap is higher because it has more shares outstanding -- 885.9 million -- compared to Google's 314.4 million shares outstanding. Market cap is the term for the value of a public company as determined by price per share multiplied by the total number of shares outstanding. For the sake of comparison, Microsoft has a market cap of $254.4 billion, while Dell Inc. has a market cap of a mere $50.8 billion. Hewlett Packard (HP) has a market cap of $112.5 billion. **************************************************************************************************** 3. EXPLAINING APPLE'S FLASH KILLER STRATEGY by John Martellaro Apple could find itself in a position in the future when poorly implemented versions of Flash and Silverlight for the Mac could put it at a competitive disadvantage, according to Dan Dilger at Roughly Drafted. Both Google and Apple, for different reasons, have a stake in an alternative technology, and that explains Apple's resistance to Flash on the iPhone. Web and client technologies have reached the point where Rich Internet Applications (RIA) are viable. One way to achieve that is open standards such as HTML, CSS and Javascript. However, the plug-in architecture of Adobe's Flash and Microsoft's Silverlight seize control of the client and basically put control of the Internet experience in the hands of those two companies. Apple is fighting back. "...if the web requires Flash or Silverlight to run, Adobe or Microsoft can either intentionally kill alternative platforms like the Mac (or Linux), or simply make them work so poorly due to their own incompetence that those platforms risk becoming non-viable. Adobe has already proven its incompetence in delivering Flash for the Mac (and really any platform outside of Windows), and I shouldn't need to recap Microsoft's historical readiness to destroy anything that isn't Windows," Mr. Dilger wrote. As a result Apple has been rethinking how this should all work and is promoting SproutCore. SproutCore, a rich way to access Web browser functionality, has none of the weaknesses of the old thin client mechanism. Moreover, "In Mobile Me, its new web apps tie into web services vended by WebObjects and WebDAV servers, but anyone can build SproutCore web apps that tie into PHP or any other existing servers that offer up data in XML or JSON objects," the author noted. In a sweeping and credible essay, Mr. Dilger outlined Apple's Internet strategy that wraps up Mobile Me, the iPhone, and open Internet standards that will not only put Apple Web apps in front of a lot of Windows users but also put the brakes on Flash and Silverlight. **************************************************************************************************** 4. APPLE PREMIERES MOVIES ON THE ITUNES STORE IN AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND Apple announced on August 14, 2008 that movies from major film studios including 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (MGM), Sony Pictures Television International and Lionsgate are now available on the iTunes Store in Australia (www.itunes.com/au) and in New Zealand (www.itunes.com/nz). Movie purchases and rentals feature iTunes? legendary ease of use, which makes discovering and enjoying movies as simple and easy as buying music on iTunes has always been. The iTunes Store in Australia and New Zealand feature over 700 films for rent or purchase, with new release titles available for purchase on the same day as their DVD release, including favorites such as ?National Treasure 2,? ?Jumper,? ?27 Dresses,? ?Cloverfield,? ?Vantage Point? and ?Pirates of the Caribbean: At World?s End.? ?Movie fans in Australia and New Zealand can choose from a great selection of over 700 films for purchase and rent on the iTunes Store,? said Eddy Cue, Apple?s vice president of Internet Services. ?iTunes provides an incredibly easy and fun way for people to discover and enjoy movies, and has quickly become the world?s most popular online movie store with customers renting and purchasing over 50,000 movies everyday.? With iTunes Movie Rentals, once a movie is rented, it starts downloading from the iTunes Store directly to iTunes or Apple TV?, and users with a fast Internet connection can start viewing the movie in seconds. Customers have up to 30 days to start watching it, and once a movie has been started customers have 48 hours to finish it?or watch it multiple times. iTunes Movie Rentals also feature over 100 titles available in stunning high definition, perfect for viewing on a widescreen TV with Apple TV. ************************************************************************ 5. VMWARE FUSION 2 BETA 2 ADDS SIGNIFICANT FEATURES by Adam C. Engst Upping the ante in the ongoing virtualization competition with Parallels, VMware has released the second public beta of VMware Fusion 2. The beta, available for free download, adds features to the Unity Mac-Windows integration technology, virtual machine snapshots to protect against problems, enhanced video capabilities and performance, and more. You can read more about it and view a demo video on VMware's Team Fusion blog. The most obvious changes in VMware Fusion 2 Beta 2 appear with Unity 2.0, which now enables application sharing between the Mac and Windows, thus letting you launch any Mac file with a Windows application. Unity 2.0 also goes beyond simple folder sharing by mirroring key folders between the two environments, such that Windows uses Mac OS X's Desktop, Documents, Music, and Pictures folders as the Desktop, My Documents, My Music, and My Pictures folders, respectively. Other Unity 2.0 improvements include custom keyboard and mouse mapping between the two environments, better reliability with shared folders, and improved copy and paste that can handle up to 4 MB of data, including styled text. Additional usability improvements include support for Leopard's Quick Look, glowing icons to indicate activity, better keyboard compatibility with Quicken and Google Earth, and better integration with Boot Camp's support for 64- bit Windows Vista. Since many Windows virtual machines are used for testing, VMware added the capability to take, save, and manage multiple snapshots, making it easier to restore a virtual machine to a pre-damaged state. Plus, Fusion 2 can now back up virtual machines automatically at specified intervals with AutoProtect snapshots. Video support has been improved, with support for 1080p high definition video in Windows XP and Vista, better 3D support, and the capability to switch in and out of full screen view while playing games. Now that Apple has eased the licensing restrictions on Mac OS X Server (see "Apple to Allow Virtualization of Leopard," 2007-10-31), you can create a virtual machine containing Mac OS X Server 10.5. The beta also includes support for Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron, provides Unity view in Linux, and offers a Linux Easy Install that can install VMware Tools for a number of popular Linux distributions. You can also now resize virtual disks. Finally, this public beta provides experimental support for up to 4 virtual CPUs in a virtual machine and offers a command-line interface for scripting VMware Fusion. Keep in mind that this is beta software and should not be used for mission-critical tasks. When Fusion 2 is finally released, it will be a free downloadable upgrade for all Fusion 1.x users. **************************************************************************************************** 6. IPHONE APPS THAT GO BEYOND ENTERTAINMENT by Adam C. Engst Not being someone with bits of extra time before meetings or while commuting or standing in line, I haven't come wholeheartedly to the iPhone revolution, and in fact, I've had to make a conscious effort to find time to use my iPod touch. Until the release of the 2.0 software, that was nearly impossible, since there was nothing the iPod touch could do that one of my Macs couldn't do better. But now that I can download software from the App Store, the iPod touch has become more useful. However, I noticed something interesting recently, while browsing the lists of top paid and free applications: they're nearly all games or in some way related to entertainment. Scanning through the list of the top 100 paid apps, I currently see about 36 that increase the functionality of the iPhone or in some way promise to make your life easier. But even that number may be deceptive, since that list includes at least four voice recorders, three conversion utilities, three programs that use the accelerometer to measure angles of incline, two password managers, a couple of calorie counters, and several location-aware apps that help you find nearby restaurants or other services. A few that would seem to provide unique capabilities include: * Teleport: This $24.99 app provides a VNC client for the iPhone or iPod touch that enables you to control any Mac or PC running a VNC server. * TouchTerm: Talk about backwards compatibility! This $2.99 app gives you an SSH-savvy terminal program for logging into Unix machines (or the Unix underpinnings of your Mac). * Files and FileMagnet: These two apps ($7.99 and $4.99, respectively) seem similar in that they let you copy files to your iPhone or iPod touch from your Mac (Files also works with Windows), and view (but not edit) common file types. * Picoli: Although it's not exactly Photoshop, the $4.99 Picoli lets you retouch photos on the iPhone itself (it also works with photos synced from your Mac, if you have only an iPod touch). * MagicPad: This notebook app goes beyond the built-in one by adding rich-text editing with fonts, colors, and styles, and by adding perhaps the most-requested iPhone feature: copy and paste. * Distance Meter: Like a full-fledged GPS, the $2.99 Distance Meter can tell you how far you've travelled and at what speed, and it provides GPS coordinates and altitude information as well. Works only with the iPhone 3G. On the free side, only 28 of the top 100 apps would seem to be useful in some form or fashion, and once again, they tend to clump, with a few apps providing ad-supported views onto Web-based news, a couple of flashlight apps that turn the screen a single bright color, and a few more location-based service finders. Still, some that stand out from the crowd include: * WritingPad: This notebook app offers an unusual text-entry approach where you trace word shapes on a keyboard, rather than tapping each key individually. * YouNote: Another note-taking application, YouNote lets you record audio notes, make notes from photos, draw notes with your fingers, capture a Web page as a note, and even compose text with the keyboard. * Flashlight: An app that just turns the screen a single bright color is silly, I know, but my teenage-girl-cell-phone from Virgin Mobile has a built-in LED flashlight, and I use it all the time. * Epocrates Rx: This drug reference is probably useful primarily to healthcare professionals, but given that it's free, I could see it being of interest to anyone taking a number of medications. (It requires that you set up a free account online.) * WeatherBug: The default Weather app from Apple is pretty weak, but WeatherBug goes much further with more current weather conditions, full text forecasts, a zoomable radar map, and photos from nearby weather cameras. Don't get me wrong - I have nothing against playing games on the iPhone, or doing puzzles, or whatever, and I do all those things, on occasion. But for many of us, free time is sufficiently scarce (and the iPhone is sufficiently expensive) that iPhone apps need to help create leisure time rather consuming it. **************************************************************************************************** 7. FIVE ITUNES 7.7.1 BUG FIXES DETAILED by Adam C. Engst Apple has released iTunes 7.7.1 with criminally terse release notes saying that it includes "fixes to improve stability and performance." As a result, it's nearly impossible to figure out what has changed, although some trawling through Apple's discussion forums yielded additional information. Two of the bug fixes below were noted by an pseudonymous Apple employee, which gives them a certain imprimatur, but for the rest, the best we can do is to offer user reports that have only anecdotal support. * A comment from Apple employee "iTunes Mike" states that iTunes 7.7.1 fixes the bug that caused accented characters in artist and track names to be corrupted (see "iTunes 7.7 Corrupts Accented Artist and Track Names," 2008-07-24). That post also confirms that the bug affected only versions of Mac OS X prior to Leopard, and only MP3 files (not AAC or Lossless). * Another post from iTunes Mike indicates that iTunes 7.7.1 should also fix a bug that prevented audio CDs from being ejected while iTunes was running. * Other users report that iTunes 7.7.1 appears to solve a problem that prevented attached iPods from being recognized quickly; some claimed that it was taking many minutes (reports ranged from 4 minutes to over 40 minutes) for iTunes to realize that an iPod was connected. * At least some people are reporting that iPhone backups that were taking an extremely long time (many hours) are now faster, although it's unclear as yet if the problem has been solved entirely, or for all users. * On the Windows side, iTunes 7.7.1 appears to fix a problem syncing information from Outlook with the iPhone. iTunes 7.7.1 is a 48 MB download available via Software Update or from the iTunes download page. **************************************************************************************************** Some articles above have been reprinted with permission from TidBITS. 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