[WelMac] Welmac News & Update 27 Apr 08

[WelMac news]

CONTENTS:
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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
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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.

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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.”

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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, <bdavies at macnexus.org>

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.

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