MoonlightMac

Beware The Recent Items Menu

2012-01-15T16:54:00.000-08:00

Been a while since I had anything to report, but this one is a doozy. I was called out to recover a lost Excel file, in which the client had entered data for three days, and then found the next morning that anything entered between 12/29 and 1/3 had vanished.

They thought they had mistakenly saved the file somewhere else, or under another name but could not find anything. To make the search even easier, there were only three Excel files on their drive. But everything was dated the 29th as the last changes made!

I entered TimeMachine and yep, every file ended at the 29th. I checked their SuperDuper backup as well, and the same thing was true. Each time, the typist had opened the file and the changes had been there, the 30th, the 31st, but on January 2nd when they came back to work, all the typing was gone.

This one beat me too. There was nothing to search for: no cache files (preserved usually only to recover from a crash) and no other temp files anywhere. Ready to throw up my hands, I went into Excel and looked under the Recent Items menu and there were two documents there, one on the cloned backup and one on the internal drive. But the path name in the menu was incomplete. The first part of the path was cut off.

Usually a path name shows where the file is, i.e.

Macintosh HD/Users/Home/Documents/Specific Folder/Name of the file.xls.

In this case, there were two looking like this:

.../Home/Documents/Specific Folder/Name of the file.xls

There was no clue as to which was on the Macintosh HD and which was on Clone Backup. A bright, bold AHA lit up the room.

What the person had done was not go into the correct folder in Documents to open the file, but instead opened from the Recent Items menu under File in Excel. Most of us do this. But one time he accidentally chose the item on the Clone Backup drive, because the drive name did not show. That made it the more recent of the two, and put it above the one on Macintosh HD. Each further edit was done to the first item.

They did not catch the mistake on the second day because their SuperDuper backup was set to run only once a week, not daily as usual. So when it did run over the holiday, it dutifly cloned the internal drive to the external, overwriting the newer file on the backup drive with the one last opened Dec. 29th.

Of course TimeMachine was no help because it doesn't index clone-backup drives, just the internal. Hence, nothing newer than 12/29. In the 20 years I have been fixing Mac problems, this is the first time I have run into this. There was indeed no way to get the missing work back, but it gave ME fodder for this blog, and a warning to everyone: Be very careful when using the Recent Items menu. It's a lot safer to simply open the folder where your document is living and open it from there. No chance for a mistake like this to happen.

January Update: Safari 5.1.2 is a Mess

2012-01-15T16:50:00.000-08:00

It took me a while to figure this out because its problems weren't immediately obvious. There wasn't a flood of howls on the Mac blogs, but it seems to be rather buggy in many subtle ways. Pages that used to stay logged in if I left them open in the Dock now close themselves. The Rainbow Wheel of Death is a more frequent visitor regardless of how often I empty cache or choose the Reset Safari command. 1Password does not work as well when used to log in to password-requiring sites. Normal sites seem to work properly, but sometimes the wrong page loads when I open a bunch at the same time using Open in Tabs.

As a result I am recommending that you stay at version 5.0.5 if you are there now. If you are at 5.1 or 5.1.1 and don't seem to be having trouble, stay there. Sadly, it's next to impossible to downgrade Safari to an older version because there are so many pieces of itself scattered all over your Library folders.

Tiger 10.4.11 users are not included here because the final version of Safari for you is 4.1.3. If you need to do banking or commerce, find the latest version of Firefox or Camino that will work for you. In FF, I believe that's version 5; Google Chrome does not have a Tiger version. Otherwise forget about using the more security-oriented sites.

Other Updates

No serious problems have come to light with the other updates issued by Software Update. Go ahead and get the ones listed, but you can highlight and delete ones for programs you don't have or use, such as the abandoned iWeb, or any of the iWork suite of apps that you did not actually buy. Those sitting on your drive are demos and can be deleted to free up space. Also feel free to get all MS Office updates and Adobe updates, avoiding upgrades to Reader beyond version 8 which offer you no advantages and strip out an important feature.

I Hate AppleMail

2012-01-15T16:49:00.000-08:00

I was never a fan of Apple's mail program but was never sure how weak it was until I was forced to quit using Eudora when switching to Lion. I made the first of the year the day to start. After all, Eudora has been abandoned since 2002 and was getting very creaky under Snow Leopard. It was always an extremely powerful program, with all kinds of hidden settings and tricks it would do. Now that they are gone I really miss them.

1) You cannot edit the Subject line of incoming mail. Highlight text and hit Delete just moves the entire message to the Trash.

2) Keyboard shortcut to the next message. (In Eudora, it's command-right arrow and command left arrow to move backwards. Command up-arrow and down-arrow do the same thing.) I can't believe they left this out!

3) Edit the text of an incoming message. Suppose I want to archive a message but it's filled with a dozen paragraphs of quoted old messages. Simple button to enable in Eudora but nothing in Mail.

4) No Transfer menu. I have to close a message and drag it to an archive mailbox. There is a similar function if I right-click the message, though. I'll give it that.

5) Even with the help of AppleCare techs, I could not make it work with a POP connection to Gmail. No problem for Eudora, Mail would work with IMAP only. While it has its uses, I have never been a fan of IMAP, which will not show your messages if you disconnect from the Net. Under POP, mail is downloaded and stored on your Mac. My regular moonmac.com account works fine as POP.

There are a few things it does right:

A Command + or - enlarges or shrinks the message type. HTML messages filled with graphics and links display correctly. Eudora was never designed to do this. Just typing a name in the TO field will autofill if the name is in the Address Book. Eudora can also do this.

November Update

2011-11-27T15:44:00.001-08:00

News & Such

Beware of a phishy Xmas e-card making the rounds of emails, ostensibly from 123Greetings.com. If you open the web link, it tells you need a FLV plug-in to see the video. Wait a moment and you may get a message that an applet is requesting access to your computer.

Don't even click the link. I have all the Safari blocks turned on, and LittleSnitch to prevent outgoing messages that would otherwise be invisible. My spam filter identified it; yours should too, but don't be taken in. No idea what it does, but it can't be good.

Mac Power Users podcast

I have been listening to this regular podcast for a couple of years now. It is created in the form of a friendly conversation about various Mac subjects, with guests discussing their own personal workflows and favorite tricks. Links to topics mentioned on the show are at their site. The show isn't for people who are already power users, although we can all learn new stuff from it; it is designed to help you become a power user. Go to the site to hear past episodes, read hints and tips, and to subscribe to it through iTunes. No charge; it comes out weekly. Past issues are downloadable through iTunes. This is a good one; you'll be glad you did.

Updates

Get 'em while they're hot - all have been out over a week and none have been shown to cause serious damage. Software Updates to Security, Java, iTunes, Safari, RAW Camera compatibility and many application-specific updates, including new drivers for your printer.

These printer updates are here because most major manufacturers have handed over the update process to Apple so they can feed through Software Update. This has not proved troublesome, except where the companies have been sluggish about posting downloadable files for people who need to reinstall their printer drivers on a freshly initialized drive.

How To Repair Permissions

As always, before and after running Software Update you should run DiskUtility and have it Repair Permissions and Verify Disk. For those who have forgotten, this is the procedure.

1) Open your Utilities folder, inside the Applications folder.
2) Locate Disk Utility. Double-click to launch.
3) When the program loads, the main part of the window will tell you to select a disk or volume from the list on the left.
4) Choose Macintosh HD (unless you have renamed your drive something else).
5) Notice the main part of the window change. You are now in the Disk First Aid part of the program. At the bottom you will see four buttons. On the left, Verify Disk Permissions and Repair Disk Permissions.

Depending on the version of the MacOS you are running the wording may be slightly different. At the bottom right will be Verify Disk, and Repair Disk, which will be greyed out. (Under Tiger, both Verify and Repair are greyed out.)

6) Click Verify Disk. When it finishes, it should say "The disk appears to be OK." Then click Repair Disk Permissions. Forget about the Verify button above it. This could take between 2 and 10 minutes. You will see a very inaccurate progress monitor and time-remaining estimate on the right.
7) When it finishes the progress monitor will go away and you can quit the program.

In the past I have had people stop at certain versions of their OS because of trouble with the update. My wait-a-week rule has been a good thing because the last update of Snow Leopard, 10.6.8, was one of those that broke things. Within a week Apple had updated it to 10.6.8 v1.1 and released a new updater. They also released a 1.1 update to fix things for those who had installed the troublesome version of 10.6.8. If you are still at 10.6.7, there is no compelling reason to run 10.6.8 as it did little to change things.

Lion is at 10.7.2 and it is still growing. Because 10.7 was such a radical change, it brought radical issues to many users, even though most people went through it okay. I believe anyone running Lion should make sure they are at the latest version.

Tiger and Leopard are stopped at 10.4.11 and 10.5.8, respectively. There are no known plans for further point updates to those versions, especially Tiger, which is now officially abandoned. Apple's rule is to support two system versions behind the current one, which is why you can use the latest Safari and iTunes with Leopard and Snow Leopard.

(PowerPC Macs, G4 and G5, end their lives at Leopard 10.5.8 and can go no further.) The reason to keep these older Macs around is to run software that does not run on newer Macs. A lot more people (including me) are doing just that.

AOL Desktop Glitch

Not many people are still using the AOL Desktop program any more, but there are still some. I ran across a bug in the application I have not been able to fix. I would love to hear from other people using it who experience the same problem.

Normally the Return and the Enter keys do the same thing: Issue a new paragraph command or click a highlighted window button. When typing in a word editor, whether email, Word, TextEdit or anything else, neither key should do anything but end a paragraph. However, in AOL's email composer, hitting the Enter key issues a Send command! If you accidentally brush that key, easy to do when typing, your mail is gone. This is a major bug and should be something you can enable or disable in a preference. I've asked on an AOL forum page about this, and all I found was a three-year-old post from someone asking how to re-enable that feature of the Enter key! It seems in the previous version of AOL Desktop they took that out and this user was unhappy.

I think it's a bug, a design error, a mistake. Hitting Enter should never just send off a message, without at least giving you an "Are you sure..." dropdown dialog that would let you cancel the send.

There are no support personnel at AOL any more, either for live chat or telephone talk. It's understandable since they had to make the service free to even stay alive at all. But it would sure be nice to have SOMEONE at the company who can receive and respond to issues.

But I can understand why there isn't. Recently the tech news announced that top executives were leaving AOL-owned companies in droves (well, small ones, anyway) and I can understand why. I've seen "The Walking Dead"; it's probably not a safe place to be right now.

2011-10-23T14:05:00.000-07:00

October Update

Lots of things have happened since my last update. Time to catch you all up. This is for users of Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion.

Hard drive prices to soar

A recent typhoon in Thailand destroyed four hard drive plants. This has already raised prices by $20 or $30; by the end of the year they may simply be hard to find at all. If you are thinking of getting a backup drive or upgrading your internal drive, I recommend you hop on this NOW.

Tiger

It’s almost over. Apple supports two systems into the past, and now that Lion is established, that means Leopard is all that will receive updates from Apple. This doesn’t mean you have to leave Tiger if everything still works for you, but it does mean that some web sites will not work with the newest possible version of Safari (4.1.2). If yours is older than that, it is okay to update Safari now. The .2 version fixes all the bugs and screwups that were introduced in version 4.1. But you will still be excluded from some of the latest places. You can still run Chrome or Firefox, though. Other updates you should get, if they are offered, are Security and Java updates.

G-Macs with the PowerPC chip can move a little closer into the present with an officially hacked version of Firefox called TenFourFox. Google it, and download the version designed for your chip (G4, G5).

You can’t sync the new iPhone or iPad because iTunes needs to be the latest version (10.5) to sync to the Mac. Minimum requirement is Leopard 10.5.8. However, the iPhone 4S can work without linking to a Mac at all and just stand alone. Its version of Mail can access your ISP directly, has its own Safari and can buy from the iTunes App Store. It can back itself up through iCloud. You have to maintain your address book within the phone. When you do upgrade your MacOS or get a new one, you can then sync things up.

Leopard

Still supported with current updates to Safari 5. The current version is 5.1, which is for 10.5, 10.6 and 10.7. You can use the latest version of Firefox and Chrome as well. Be sure to get the latest security updates, and it’s also okay to get the current version of QuickTime and iTunes. At the moment, if you are on 10.5.8 there are no problematic updates out there. Leopard is the end of the line for G-Macs.

Snow Leopard 10.6

Just a few printer updates plus iTunes 10.5. The current version is 10.6.8, which is a version updated two weeks after the first one came out, to fix some bugs in that release. This is why I always say to wait a week or two before installing updates. I had not had any problems myself, but the blogs were full of complaints, later resolved by the 10.6.8 v1.1 update. Now that is included in the normal 10.6.8 update. Check with Software Update and see if there is a Supplemental Update; if so, get it.

Lion

Current version is 10.7.2. If you are running Lion you need this update. Lion was the most troublesome upgrade we have seen in some time. It’s been working pretty well for me, but I don’t really push my Mac very hard. The MacFixIt blog is full of comments and complaints, and reports of icon placement bugs that were fixed in the update, others claiming still weird.

Safari 5.1 had a text-rendering problem that has been fixed in the 5.1.1 update. Otherwise the new Safari has been fine. You must update 1Password to work with it, however.

I am still searching for alternatives to the apps I lost in the move to Lion. At MacCamp earlier, two classes focused on Lion and one on alternatives to Quicken. I will be very happy to leave the Intuit company behind for good, because they have always been hostile to Mac users and put less effort into their products. One pro-Mac company is IGG Software, publishers of iBank, which is Mac-only and also makes a version for iOS. I will be reporting on how well it works after I have tried it out for a while. It comes with a free trial period so you don’t have to buy it until you know it works for you. It can import Quicken files directly from the exported .qif format, supported in Quicken 2007 or earlier. Quicken Stripped to Worthlessness, aka Quicken Essentials, doesn’t even do this kind of export so avoid it at all costs, even if it is Lion compatible.

1Password

Speaking of 1Password, although it has a complex learning curve, I recommend it as the solution to the multiple-password problem so many Mackers have. You create a simple but difficult-to-guess passphrase and it creates almost-uncrackable passwords for all your web sites. It saves them in a format that you can look up whenever you need to see them, but it does the login for you whenever you go to a password-requiring site. You can also store your bank info in it, and your personal form data so when you find a site where you want to fill in your name, address, phone and other info, it will do it for you in one click. Used in tandem with the free Dropbox to archive and protect your 1Password data file, you can eliminate all worry about losing passwords again.

I like to keep a human-readable text file stored in its Secure Notes section so I can just open the program and read the info whenever I need to say my credit card info on the phone, or otherwise use a password in a non-Web browser context. Dropbox can also copy that file to your iPhone or iPad, and there is a version of 1Password for the phone as well.

iOS5

Some people report failure to install this update to their phone or pad. My iPhone 4 had no problems with the update, and I like the new features it brings. I’m in no hurry to get the 4S, although it would be fun to play with the Siri feature. One thing I like a lot about the update is the fact that the camera shutter can now be triggered by pressing on the sound-up button on the side, making the phone work more like a real camera. Very convenient. Auto-correct is still a good source of mirth and frustration, which makes really bizarre and incorrect assumptions about what you want to type. I turned mine off immediately in Settings.

To experience some of the fun others have had, visit the Auto-cowrecks section of FailBlog.

iCloud

Part of Lion 10.7.2 and iOS5, this replacement for MobileMe automatically stores desired files on Apple’s servers (what marketers call “the cloud”) and syncs contacts and bookmarks, among other things, between your Mac and your iOS device. Although I am using it now, I have not really experienced it because I have not had to recover any files from it. It is nice to have my Apple Address Book info always updated in my iphone without having to wait for a manual sync through iTunes. There is talk of bringing iCloud to Snow Leopard through a 10.6.9 update, but that has not happened yet. MobileMe will go dark next June, so if you are using it, start planning your migration away from it now. iWeb has been discontinued, and any photos or other web pages you have created on MobileMe should be moved over to Flickr or some other photo-hosting service.

Byword; Mac Power Users

This post was composed in a new $9.99 word-processing program designed for writers who are sick of Microsoft Word and find OpenOffice too complex for just plain old writing. Another, more expensive, program called Scrivner has a lot of fans too. Byword supports the Markdown format of coding pages, which is a much simpler way to create coding for blogs, or html for your web site. Markdown is a world of its own and I must learn more about it, which I am starting to do with this app. Once the page is composed, it can be exported to the Clipboard in HTML, ready to be pasted into your blog-site composition window.

I learned about this on the podcast MacPowerUsers, which you can subscribe to through iTunes. It’s not just for power users; it’s to help all Mac users become power users. I recommend everyone subscribe to this and listen. Each episode discusses a specific topic - the last one was about a writer's workflow and his favorite writing applications. There is always something to be learned in the discussion-format program; you will want to keep a pen handy. The show notes, with links, are on the site, where you can play any episode of the show.

SuperDuper Super Oops

2011-09-18T07:46:00.000-07:00

This is a case of SuperDuper out of control. I was investigating problems with a MacPro that had too much stuff on the hard drive. I launched Grand Perspective, a great app that gives a colored graphical representation of what files are on the drive and how big they are.

I noticed a large section filled with files that started with the path name of the backup drive. Now, normally Grand Perspective only shows the drive you ask it to inspect. I should not have been seeing what I was seeing. Tracing the path, it seemed that it started in the Volumes folder, an invisible folder on all OSX drives.

I made it visible using the widget "Hidden Files" and opened it up. This folder normally contains only aliases to drives plugged into the Mac, including the internal drive(s).

There was no alias for the backup drive. Instead there was a folder with the name of that drive and a second folder named the same but with a 1 at the end.

Switching over to SuperDuper and looking at the Schedule window I found five separate schedules, 15 minutes apart, two of which were in red. The backup was failing every time and I could not select the proper backup drive in its main window.

Somehow two of the schedules had pointed themselves into this Volumes folder and was dutifully backing up the internal drive onto itself in this invisible folder. The real folder had replaced the alias that should have been in Volumes and almost 400 gigs of files had filled it up.

Okay, delete. The first thing I discovered is you can't just delete from the Volumes folder. I would get a -8002 error if I even tried moving it to the Trash. Not knowing the technique to delete things in Terminal, I decided to enable Root and logged in as that. But the folder was invisible again. I tried installing the Hidden Files widget but it would fail to install! This was getting rather frustrating.

Okay, maybe it will work if I restart from my repair drive and log THAT into root and maybe it would let me install the widget there. I normally have Show Hidden Files always enabled when running from that drive so I thought, what the hell, I will try to delete those folders from here.

Surprise. It let me Trash those folders and then option-Empty Trash worked! I deleted both folders, one at a time, after ensuring that there was a successful TimeMachine backup in case my doing this destroyed the rest of the data on his drive. Not only did he have one, but Time Machine does not make copies of those invisible folders so I could have restored without also restoring the problem.

It takes a while to delete 385,000 files, even on a Pro. But when done, I ran Disk Warrior on the Pro's drive, which said it was okay. I restarted and not only did it boot just fine, with the almost 400 gigs of free space restored, but the Volumes folder now had a proper alias of the backup drive right where it belonged.

I created a new SuperDuper schedule and ran the backup and it went perfectly, with no failures.

The lesson for the reader here is that SuperDuper has a glitch that can get you in trouble.

Normally, when you set up the program, you click the Schedule button (after first defining the backup you want as a Smart Backup, not an Erase and Copy) and the window appears, followed immediately by a drop-down window that lets you pick the days and the time for the backup to run. This is how it should work, but the problem is after you create a schedule, the next time you click that button you get the same drop-down. What you must do there is click Cancel, then highlight the schedule script in the window and click Edit to make changes. If you just choose settings in the drop-down, it creates a second (third, fourth and so on) schedule, fifteen minutes later than the last (if you don't specify the time).

These extra schedules caused the problem, two of them having decided to install themselves in the Volumes folder. Then the schedules interfered with each other and the whole thing failed. So be careful when editing your schedule! It is okay to have multiple schedules, especially if you have a second drive with original material on it and you want SuperDuper to clone that drive to another backup drive (or second partition on your main backup drive).

There is a detailed PDF under SuperDuper's Help menu that tells you how to do all this and explains all the features, with pictures and descriptions. But how many users Read That Fine Manual?

Hint: I didn't read it either. I learned through trial and error.

Lion Part 3, Updates, iTunes Story

2011-08-17T13:13:00.000-07:00

10.7.1 is out

If you are one of the few who upgraded to Lion 10.7, Apple just issued the first, much-needed, update. It consists of the usual round of bug fixes and no visible changes. I installed it immediately, did the usual repair-permissions thing, and am using it now.

It hasn't been made any more compatible with PPC applications, and it never will. So I must continue using my dual MBAir/MacMini system so I can keep using Quicken, Eudora, Word 2008 and all the other stuff that Lion won't run.

Lion Experiences, Part 3

But living with 10.7 for almost a month now has gotten me used to the new features. Last week's PMUG meeting taught me more about the system than three weeks of dinking around did, and I find I like it more. The new backwards scrolling feels more natural now and it's harder to switch back. I am also enjoying the new Mission Control feature that replaced Spaces, and the full-screen feature that I am using with Screen Sharing. In fact, Screen Sharing works so well now I could probably reduce using my KVM switch to move between systems. I still get bitten by forgetting to eject the USB drive before hitting the switch, which has the same result as unplugging without ejecting. I just wish the USB part of the KVM switch worked. It was the last hole in the system.

Setting the Shared Screen to the Mini while running under Lion gives me the best of both worlds. It feels just like I am running Eudora in Lion. Yes, I understand that Eudora is a shambling zombie, shedding limbs as it stumbles around the abandoned city seeking brains, but I have not found a program I like more. Price of being old, I guess.

I Now Take Plastic

Got an iPhone? Run a small business? If you never contracted with Visa/MC to take plastic before due to hassle and expense, there is a real alternative with Square. Visit the iTunes Store and hunt down the Square app. You download a small program to the phone, then go to their web site to register an account and tell them which bank they should transfer your money to, and then they mail you a little "square" device that plugs into the earphone jack on your phone. Open the app, plug in the Square, and you are ready to swipe a card. Its security is as good as any credit card system (faint praise, I know) but their service charge is half that of a normal Visa system. Fill out the customer's email address and the dollar amount and the transfer is immediate. An email receipt is sent to the customer, and after a couple of days, the amount, minus 2.5%, is transferred to your bank.

So if you ever want to charge my service call, remind me if I don't mention it.

Snow Leopard Update

As you may remember, I put the 10.6.8 update on the Don't Bother list. It didn't offer any advantages and did introduce serious bugs for a few people; enough to keep the Mac blogs hopping for weeks.

Someone at Apple was paying attention, because last week they issued an update to the update, 10.6.8 v1.1, which reportedly fixed a lot of the problems. So states the experience of people writing in. Me, I don't know because I stayed at 10.6.7 and will continue to do so.

In releasing the update, Apple also repaired the downloadable Combo Update without changing the name. If you were to go to Apple/Downloads and get it, the new version contains the fixes and Software Update would not offer the 1.1 updater after you installed it. About This Mac would still say 10.6.8.

If you ever do decide to go Lion, you can use 10.6.6 or later to get it from the App Store. When you do, the Lion installer will take you directly to 10.7.1. It couldn't hurt you to wait for 10.7.2, which is now being seeded to developers to test their own programs against. See it by September.

Leopard Updates

There are still updates issued for Leopard 10.5. The final version is 10.5.8 and that is required for the latest iTunes and a few other things, but if you don't need that and are using 10.5.7, stay put until you leave Leopard for good. There are security updates being issued and they are important now that there is actual Mac malware around. Do get those.

iTunes 10.4

It works. No bugs. I am pleasantly surprised. Usually the dot-zero version of any upgrade is problematic. Every Mac I have run it on has demonstrated normal behavior. Good job, iTunes team.

Speaking of iTunes

Most people use the Migration Assistant to move their data from an old Mac to a new one. Sometimes, when that isn't possible or desirable, I manually move the appropriate files, preferences, picture and movie files. That usually works out fine, but there is a problem with iTunes that has not been fixed since the first time I experienced it, three or four years ago.

iTunes is the only application that makes non-standard use of the green button. All other apps will toggle between full size and previous size whenever you click it. iTunes, however, switches between mini-player and normal window. The only way to change the size is to grab the lower right corner and manually resize it. But what do you do if the window is too big for the screen and you can't reach that corner because it's below the bottom? Nothing. You're stuck. This happens if you copy the iTunes Folder from Music on a big screen to a small one, like a MacBook. The program thinks it's still on the big screen and the bottom is down below the bottom, in unreachable-land.

The first time it happened, when I realized what it was doing, I went back to the older Mac, opened iTunes, and shrunk the window so it would fit the smaller screen. Then re-copied the whole folder over again. Well, that takes gigs and I thought there had to be a better way.

So I called Apple and although they had other reports of this problem on file, they had never issued a fix that their support people could tell you to do. Sure, you could throw out everything but your iTunes Music folder and then re-import, but you'd lose all your playlists. So Apple escalated me to a level-2 tech and they couldn't fix it either. They sure tried; tossing out com.apple.itunes.plist and similar files, zapping the PRAM, Safe Booting, all for naught.

While waiting on hold I went back to the old Mac and did the window resize, and then copied everything in the iTunes folder except the actual music files, brought that over to replace the squirrely ones and then just put the music in its place. I launched iTunes, and presto, the new size was remembered and it fit the screen. So the answer was somewhere in that folder. I hoped it wasn't the iTunes Music Library.xml file because I thought that is where the playlists are stored. It turned out to be the iTunes Library.itl file because it was the only other one that seemed to have no other use.

This is important to know because maybe the old Mac no longer runs, although the drive, or a clone backup, is accessible so going back and resizing the window is impossible. I went home to my Mac and tried simply removing that file to see if that is all it would take. Nope, the bad news is the playlists, as well as the entire library index, are stored in that file and not in the iTunes Music Library.xml file as I had thought. Removing that one and not the other makes no apparent change to the iTunes window.

So the bottom line is everything important is stored in that .itl file. Remove it and the window opens to the default size for your screen, but your playlists are gone and the library is empty. Your only option at that point is to choose Add To Library... from the File menu and choose your iTunes Music folder so it can re-index all the music, apps and videos you have in there. Playlists are gone for good.

This is a rare bug because most people rely either on the Migration Assistant or physically copying files from their backup drive. Also, most people seldom move from a big screen to a smaller one. Another fix would be plugging in an external display that's big enough to show the large iTunes window and then resizing it. This bug also reappears if you have the window sized to fit your big display and then unplug it to view the laptop screen alone.

Every other window resizes itself when you do that, or resizes if you press the green button. Apple could fix this by moving the window-size information to the .plist file in Preferences. I hope they do that in the next update. If you know anyone on the iTunes development team, please forward this story to them.

Lion Experiences, part 2

2011-07-27T12:28:00.000-07:00

While I like some of the features, I do not like the changes to Spaces. It is now too easy to accidentally invoke a screen shift while difficult to drag items from one to another. I also find it increasingly obvious that this is not really ready for prime time and one should wait for 10.7.1, at the earliest. I am seriously thinking about blowing off Lion and returning to SNL myself. I discovered that now that I can no longer use Eudora, I really hate AppleMail.

Recently I had my first repair call for a Lion installation gone bad. Recovery from this is much worse than I imagined. First the warning:

DO NOT DO THIS UNTIL YOU HAVE MADE A CLONE BACKUP OF YOUR SNOW LEOPARD DRIVE!

Even a TimeMachine backup is not sufficient because full recovery from them is very difficult. You want to be able to boot off of your backup drive and clone it all back, killing Lion completely.

This client had broken all the rules. He left his startup items in place (System Preferences, Accounts, Login Items) instead of deleting them all. Each restart automatically launched incompatible apps, causing crashes. He did not do a Repair Disk and Repair Permissions with Disk Utility first.

He did this on his production Mac Pro, without a clone backup. All of this made his Mac's Murphy chip glow hot with excitement. If he had the clone, the chip might have let his installation succeed, but due to the other factors he would still have had problems. Without a clone it is impossible to return to Snow Leopard without erasing the drive before installation, and since TimeMachine had already run, all he could have recovered were his documents.

Lion installs an emergency recovery partition on your drive that contains a copy of Disk Utility and a minimal system. You access this by holding down the Option key at startup and choosing it from the icons that immediately appear. At the moment that is the ONLY repair program available; DiskWarrior will need an upgrade to work on a Lion system.

Oh, the icing on the turd: his drive was 98% full. You should never let a startup drive go beyond 80% because the rest of the space is needed by virtual memory for swapfiles, printing for temporary spool files, caches and the like. I was able to get him down to 92% full, which helped, and set him about clearing off the rest of the space hogs to an external drive. Then I had him go buy another drive for SuperDuper and get that running. I believe, but am not certain, that SuperDuper's latest version is compatible. (2.6.2 is not.)

Disaster story

Speaking of that Murphy chip, another client has suffered hard drive failure on a production iMac with NO backups. This is not repairable due to actual disk damage. I am able to rescue files with DiskWarrior, but that particular iMac does not use industry-standard drives (special heat sensor built onto the drive) so I could NOT keep the old one for later recovery (which I had started to do using DiskWarrior). To fix under warranty Apple wants the dead drive back immediately as an exchange or they want $340 cash for the new one. They give only 48 hours slack for the old drive to be returned. Mac shops do not keep extras of this drive in stock. Oh, and she had deadlines to meet. Those deadlines are now dead.

Most of you already know this and are doing it now, but for those of you who are not, here are some questions to ask yourself:

Would you feel badly if your Mac woke up dead and you lost every document on it, including your email, web bookmarks, Documents folder, iTunes music, etc.? Some people only use their Macs for Web browsing and email and keep the email on the server (Gmail, for instance) so they could lose their data without worry.

Do you use your Mac for production? Could you do without it for a week? With a clone backup you can boot from the clone and finish critical work before taking your Mac in for repair, or move it to a 2nd Mac, if you have one. That 2nd Mac would need to be able to boot from the same drive, impossible if your main Mac is Intel and the other one is PPC. You might have problems launching applications from the clone on the 2nd Mac if the registration is tied to the machine (Adobe is the killer here).

Do you have a lot of documents you do not want to lose, but can do without your Mac while it's being repaired? A TimeMachine backup is sufficient for you. A daily clone is much more convenient because a TimeMachine backup will still require you to reinstall your applications. If you have CS5 purchased as an upgrade from an earlier CS version, you will need the older disk, or at least the serial number, to install the upgrade. Can you find it?

The answer for all Mac user except the extremely casual user cited above is this: Go buy an external drive now. If you want to combine TM and Clone on the same drive, it should be a terabyte, partitioned into two volumes. Check your internal drive now - how much data is on it? Highlight it with a click and type Command-I. It will tell you the capacity of the disk, how much data is on it now, and space remaining. If you have a 500Gb or 1Tb internal drive but less than 100Gb full, a 500 will do you. The clone volume can be 200Gb with the other one serving TimeMachine, which does not delete older versions of documents and needs more space. Powered drives are usually 1Tb and are cheaper than unpowered portable 500 drives, but if you have a laptop and want to take your backup with you, the portable is better. Be aware that both could be stolen! Better to leave the backup drive at home or have ANOTHER cloned backup stored elsewhere. Hardcore paranoids rotate backup clones each week, keeping one in a safety deposit box.

It's your data. DriveSavers charges $1500 and up to recover a dead drive. How lucky do you feel?

My Experience with Lion, part 1

2011-07-21T17:39:00.000-07:00

Getting Ready for Lion

My original intention was to just forget about Lion for a few months, letting others do Apple's field testing for them. Then I realized I should go ahead and do it because I need to learn as much as possible, in preparation for those clients who will need help with it. But to give it a go, I had to do a lot of preparation.

A Twin System

The recommended way is to make a clone backup of your Snow Leopard (SNL) system so if things fall apart, one can just boot from the clone and copy it all back, wiping Lion off the map. This is always good, and I always run a clone (SuperDuper) backup in addition to my TimeMachine backup.

Since so many of my necessary programs die under Lion I decided I need to have a 10.6 system always around, which is easy to switch over to. Programs I lose under Lion include Eudora, AppleWorks, Word 2004 and Quicken 2006 (and 2007). The only Quicken that runs under Lion is Quicken Stripped Of Any Usefulness, aka "Quicken Essentials." Intuit doesn't care; they are in the business of helping Microsoft sell as many computers as possible and they couldn't care less about their Mac clients.

I already have a keyboard, mouse and 24" Asus display. I also have a MacMini that serves the TV set. So I bought an IOGear KVM switch (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) that supported DVI plugs, which both Macs do, with an adapter. Price: $99. So off to Frys I go.

This one also has sound ports, so I can, with a single button press, switch screens, sound output and USB devices. That's the idea, anyway. Setting it up I learned that while the video and sound switches flawlessly, the USB would not switch. I called the company to find out why, and the tech, who didn't really seem to know much, told me that their device did not support USB hubs, powered or otherwise, contrary to the page in the manual which shows how to set it up. He even tried to convince me that the mouse had to go in the mouse-marked port and the keyboard in the KB port.

With a lot of trial and error I finally managed to plug the keyboard in and get that switching, and then got the mouse to work plugged into the keyboard. Since the Air has only two USB ports I did not want to use them both to feed the KVM switch because I could get the hub to work by manually switching the plug between the two Macs when I wanted to print something or run the backup drives.

So I almost got what I want and it works well enough to use. That is good because KVM switches that have DVI are uncommon; most of them are VGA, which costs a quarter of what the DVI one cost. Projectors, the most common market use for KVMs are perfectly happy with VGA output since they are not capable of high resolution images.

Downloading Lion

It was the first day, so there was no other way but to buy and download it from the App Store. It took almost 10 hours because my house is located in 2001 where the best DSL signal I can get is 1.5 Mbps. One mile north and I am in 2011 with 20Mbps. I could, of course, hand over 33% of my soul to Concast and get a good signal from them, but I'd rather have my eyes sucked out by lampreys. (Using Concast's TV costs another 33% of your soul, with the final third going for their phone service. You are allowed to keep 1% of your soul for other purposes.)

Anywhilst, late that evening I had the Lion installer on the drive of my MacBook Air, so I quit everything and started it up. I violated several of the rules I and other techs insist on, just to see what would happen. I did not remove my startup items from Account Preferences, and did not repair permissions first. I had already run Disk Warrior so I knew the Air's "disk" was okay. Installation took just 20 minutes.

By the way, Apple claims that you need 10.6.8 in order to get Lion from the App Store. That is not true. You can do it with 10.6.6 or 10.6.7. All that is necessary is that you be able to access the App Store, which was introduced with the 10.6.6 update. People on Leopard 10.5 will not be able to get Lion until Apple makes it available on a Flash drive, rumored to be out in August some time.

Using Lion

I was pleased to learn that a lot of my most important utilities (Dropbox, SMC FanControl, Little Snitch, You Control) worked fine. I did have to give up Remember, which popped up reminder messages when configured to. The one that comes with iCal does not work as well.

The other issue I had trouble with was actually on the SNL Mini. I could not get screen or file sharing to work, even though both Macs were on the Internet and all the IP addresses were correct. I called AppleCare, and after an escalation to a network specialist, we found the problem was actually incorrect preferences in Network. There were two AirPorts, one of which had an Ethernet icon. She had me clear them all away and create new ones, one for Ethernet connection and one for AirPort.

That fixed it. Screen sharing works perfectly now.

For those of you who have never used it, screen sharing allows me to display the screen from one Mac on another, and operate it remotely. (I wish that worked well enough over the internet that I could use it with my clients!) But since I now have a laptop that will not run the primary programs I have on the Mini, Screen Sharing means I don't have to go to the desk and run the Mini to enter something in Quicken or read/write mail in Eudora. This was the last barrier to using Lion full time.

I can always use Safari to access my email when on the Air, which is what I do anyway when I am away from my Mac but have access to another one.

The differences in how Lion works compared to SNL are pretty interesting. Scrolling with fingers on the trackpad or using the arrows (or the Magic Mouse) are backwards. Instead of dragging in the direction you want the scroll bar to go, you instead drag in the direction you want the page to move. It's more intuitive once you get used to it. Scroll bars disappear when not being used. Check your own use of scroll bars: When you want to move up screen the text is actually moving downward as you drag upward. Bet you never even thought of it as being backwards before.

Windows that always have a scroll bar, like your Documents folder, work the same way when you drag the bar, but to drag downwards with two-finger dragging on the Pad, it moves the opposite way. It's difficult to visualize and describe, even when I have one hand on the Mini's slider and the other on the Air's. Get used to using the arrows on the keyboard more; in Safari and reading email, among other things, they make it much easier.

Sites you should visit to learn more about Lion, including reader reports include the Lion section of Macintouch; the App Compatibility Table; the Lion FAQ on Macintouch; and MacUpdate, State of the Apps. Want more? Google is your friend.

New Macs

Along with the release of Lion, Apple shipped two new Macs: an upgraded Air with the i5 and i7 chip that is in the rest of the MacBook/iMac line (almost twice as fast as the Core 2 Duo at the same clock speed) and a new Mini. Both have the ThunderPort that can drive an external display (not including Apple's current model) and various external storages devices which will begin to show up in the stores soon. The new Air, with the biggest SSD and most RAM appears to be $100 cheaper than the last model.

If you have an older Mini now and you have the software that you need to use upgraded to Lion compatibility, this looks like a great buy. It does not have an optical drive, like the Air, so you will need an external USB drive for that. Apple's is $79 and works only with the Air and the new Mini. The Mini can have either a 500 (standard) or 750Gb hard drive, or the 256G SSD that the Air uses and is unbelievably fast. The base model is $599 but has only 2Gb RAM, so you would want to expand that, at least. It will take up to 8Gb. (4Gb add $100; 8Gb add $300.) Visit the Apple Store online and have fun with their configurator so you can see just what your unit would cost with all the add-ons you desire.

Danger - Back up your iCal

2011-04-14T11:47:00.000-07:00

This just in: a client reported that when she cancelled her MobileMe account, which synchronizes and backs up your calendars to the "cloud," all of her calendar files ON HER MAC were also deleted. Apple has been non-responsive.

A TimeMachine backup would let you recover them, but this little screwup on Apple's part could cost you YEARS of your appointment history if you don't have such a backup. It's not known if this affects all versions of iCal, but it certainly affected her Snow Leopard (10.6) version.

It also wouldn't hurt if you went to the File menu in iCal and chose Export, Calendar Archive and saved that in Documents periodically.

Nobody expected this until it happened.

Fix for MB Air freezing problems

2011-04-02T12:26:00.000-07:00

The latest MacBook Air, which I have, has developed problems with iTunes making the Mac freeze up after the 10.6.7 update. My update went fine for a few days, but then I also developed the problem.

Fortunately, Apple is on top of this, with a supplemental update.

I am about to install this but it will take a few days to know if it worked as promised. Posters to Macintouch have stated that it fixed their problem.

This affects ONLY Air users running 10.6.7. No word of problems with the newest generation of MacBook Pro models.

10.6.7; Firefox 4

2011-03-27T16:10:00.000-07:00

(3/21)

10.6.7 is out

I no sooner send out my first mailing this month and an hour later Apple releases the 10.6.7 update.

As always, wait a week before getting this, to give Apple a chance to discover some horrible mistake and replace it with a fixed version. If I experience or read about any problems with it, I will report, but if I say nothing after a week you can go ahead and get it.

Here's the direct link for the Combo update but be aware that it's 1.06 Gb in size. Just downloading it made my MacBook Air feel heavier.

(3/26)

After studying the reports from others who installed the 10.6.7 update, it seems the only people who were reporting problems were those who had the same Mac I have: the fastest MacBookAir. They were getting freezes upon opening iTunes 10.2.1.

I made a SuperDuper clone backup first, then turned off the backup drive so I would have a way to return everything to the way it was. This is why clone backups are good to have in addition to Time Machine backups.

Then I repaired permissions and Verified Disk with Disk Utility.

Then I restarted, holding down the Shift key until I got Safe Boot in the login window. This was advised by other bloggers, although I have seldom done it before myself.

Finally I applied the Combo update, which I had downloaded from Apple (also recommended). After it finished and restarted, I repaired permissions again.

I took a breath and launched iTunes and plugged in my phone. No freezing; no problems.

Owners of the new laptops released earlier this month cannot use the Combo Update. You will have to use Software Update to go to 10.6.7. Same precautions apply.

If you don't have a backup drive, you might want to skip the update until you can get one. If you have Time Machine only, you can still use that should you have to restore your 10.6.6 system; it's just more of a nuisance.

Firefox 4

Now officially released, here is a page of reports on how people are responding to Firefox 4.0 and how to get it.

It doesn't say on the FF page, but this requires you be running 10.5 or 10.6 on an Intel Mac. The reader reports also discuss how to keep both 3.1.6 and 4 going together so you can switch back and forth, but you will need a separate Profile for each. Info on how to do that is at http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Managing%20profiles. Note: if this seems very complicated, you are correct. I may decide not to bother and just delete FF3.

Firefox 4 for PowerPC

There is a 3rd-party build of FF4 for older Macs called TenFourFox. You can get it and read all about it here. This is not by the Mozilla people, but is a good way to keep a modern browser (for banking, commerce, etc.) on older Macs.

Google Chrome 10

I did all this reading and downloading on the newly-released Google Chrome version 10. This is faster and smoother than Chrome 9 was. Intel Mac users might want to get this as well. It never hurts to have various browsers to switch to in case your primary one (in my case Safari) has any trouble with a particular site. To get it, just go to Google and there will be a Get Chrome link.

1Password Review

2011-03-27T15:54:00.000-07:00

This is a review of a password-management program that I wrote for the April issue of PMUG Mouse Tracks. If you hate dealing with passwords as much as I do, you will want to learn and use this program.

_____

1Password

by Michael Pearce

I got hooked on this program after the publisher presented at PMUG last year. It finally motivated me to quit using the strategy of using the same password for all junk sites, and a more complex one for banking and commerce.

Everyone does this. Nobody likes to deal with passwords, and most people forget to write down their important ones, letting the web browser store and fill them for you. This is why so many get hacked; and figuring out what you use for one web site lets the maliciously-minded explore other sites with the same one. Each site stores another piece of your identity so it can be possible to discover your home address, phone number, mother's maiden name, first pet's name, work place and everything else needed to attack your bank's site, or crack your Amazon or iTunes account.

1Password eliminates this problem entirely by generating, filling and storing a different complex password for every web site you subscribe to. You need only create and memorize a single passphrase to access the application and it does the rest. For this, the most secure route is to create an pass-sentence of 3 or 4 words, no spaces, with the first letter of each capitalized. No dictionary attack is going to figure that out.

The program will not only store all your website logins, but it will also store your credit card info and fill it out for you on any web form. It has a Secure Notes section where you can write out all that information in English so you can look it up directly whenever you need to. Notes can also store all your serial numbers in case you need to reinstall an application and re-enter your number. All this is encrypted so no one, even if they steal your laptop or break into your house, can get into the 1Password database without your secret passphrase.

If you have an iPhone you can also get a version for it, and coupled with the Dropbox application, store a copy of your database on the phone and on the Dropbox web site.

I have never needed to access that remotely stored info, and don't use the phone for web very often, but many do and they will find this added security very handy. The only difficult part will be using the iPhone's pathetic keyboard screen for typing your passphrase. You might be able to use Smile Software's TextExpander to do that for you, but that could increase your risk a tad.

The Strong Password Generator, an option in the 1P button in your web browser, is simplicity itself. Pick the number of desired characters and the complexity and it creates one for you, saves it under the name you choose along with your login name for the desired web site. Afterwards, when you go to the site's login window, just click the button and choose Fill and Submit Login and it does the work for you. When the browser asks you if you want to save the info for you, click Never for This Site and it won't ask again.

After you have finished creating new passwords for all your logins, go into the browser preferences (Safari: Autofill) then click Usernames and Passwords' Edit button. Click Remove All and you are done. If you then uncheck the box next to Usernames and Passwords it will stop asking, even when you visit new sites for the first time.

This button is added to your Safari window. A similar one is added to Firefox.

This menu appears with appropriate items for the web page you want to log into.

First thing you see when you start 1Password.

One of the options when open: This is where your login information for all your websites is stored. You can update this at will, or when on the site (for instance, when you change your password.)

This window generates a new password that is random and virtually uncrackable. You have several options that can be imposed on it, depending on site requirements.

Mac magazines

2011-03-27T15:53:00.000-07:00

(March 21)

Now reading the April issues of Mac Life and Macworld. I highly recommend that new users, who may not think these are for them, start reading both. There is more useful information in each issue than I can teach in multiple sessions, and it's clearly written for everyone; not just hardcore Mac geeks like me.

If you want to start somewhere, get the Macworld and read "100 Things Every Mac User Should Know." This is the best collection of hints, tips and how-tos I have seen in some time. Every one is useful, and I guarantee that all of you will find at least ten in the list that will make your Mac experience better.

MacLife explores the world of Google Apps and how useful they can be, and not just because they can save you the $149 you'd spend on Microsoft Office. Also reviewed: battery pack cases for iPhones. I have been using the Mophie pack since I first got my 3GS and I never have to worry about running out of power. There are brands here I was not aware of.

Included is an article on how to make a Mac-based home theater. I have done this myself and the article is spot on. Sure, the AppleTV is cheaper, but a MacMini and your HDTV are a match made for each other.

Photographer? Macworld discusses how the MacBook Air is the perfect tool for that photographer on the go.

Some of these articles can be read on the magazines' respective web sites, but there is nothing like a nicely-formatted dead-tree version you can keep handy for easy referral. Start getting the Mac magazines; you will thank me later.

New MacBook Pros released

2011-03-27T15:50:00.000-07:00

(24 Feb)

Happy Birthday, Steve Jobs: in celebration Apple has revised all 3 models of MacBook Pro. Read all about them at Apple's site.

The 13" was advanced the most: It now has the Intel Core i5 instead of the earlier Core2Duo, like the rest of the line. Still $1199, you get that processor, 4Gb RAM, 320Gb internal HD and the Intel HD Graphics 3000 card.

Spend $300 more and move up to the 2.7 GHz i7 processor and a 500Gb drive. Then it gets interesting:

Go to the store's Configuration page and you can start boosting it up. Add $200 for 8Gb RAM. Add $100 more for a 750Gb hard drive. Take a deep breath and realize, that's 3/4 Terabyte in a laptop! Or, if you really want speed, use a Solid State Drive like the Air does and replace the stock HD with 128Gb SSD for $200, 256Gb for $600, or go nuts with a half-terabyte SSD drive for $1,200 more. That'll take it to $1799 with the HD or $2899 with the SSD.

You can do all this with the 15" and 17" models as well, for proportionately more.

This means, of course, that unsold stock of previous models will drop a tad. The 13" model would be perfect for most people if you add in a non-Apple large display for under $200. Mine is a 24" Asus.

If you like very light and not as quick for under $2 grand, I did it with the current MacBook Air.

Time to polish up the ol' credit card. If you like paying even higher interest, you can finance through the Apple Store, but if you pay if off in 12 months, there is no interest charge. They do it through the Barclay Bank Visa.

While it's so new there is no real support for it yet, the Thunderbolt port, which serves as the Mini DisplayPort, can also connect to high speed RAID drive systems and transfer data faster than any other format.

This looks like why Apple has been ignoring USB 3.0 and has not been talking about FireWire 1600, the logical next step beyond 800.

In order to use it with an external display, one would have to be designed to plug both devices into a single port, and that does not yet exist.

While a fully maxed-out 15" model with 512Gb SSD and 8Gb RAM would push the price near $4 grand, it would substitute for any model iMac and any MacPro, as long as you didn't need the Pro's expansion slots.

(Jan. 7) 10.6.6 Installed

2011-01-21T10:47:00.000-08:00

Today I installed the latest Snow Leopard update so I could access the new Mac Apps Store (located under the Apple menu). I "bought" the free Twitter for Mac program and the installation went flawlessly.

I am going to stick with YoruFukurou as my primary Twitter client, but I do like the new Tweetie 2.0 (which is what Twitter is) because it lets me create several unsent tweets at once, work on them and then fire them off all in a row. Otherwise it is an overly stripped-down program, without even the option of larger fonts.

When you install 10.6.6, be absolutely sure to run Disk Utility and repair permissions both before and afterwards. It found hundreds of items to update. Also click Verify Disk when finished. Mine came out fine. As always, download the Combo Update instead of relying on the smaller and simpler updater from 10.6.5 that Software Update provides. You will find it here.

If you'd rather I do it I have it with me so let me know.

The App Store is actually a separate application from the iTunes Store, although you log in with your iTunes username and password. It's been reported widely that the security of the store has been cracked already and there will be pirate versions of Mac apps available elsewhere on the Net, some of which may contain malware. The applications on the store itself should remain clean, though.

I am also happy to report that the conflict between Flip4Mac (Windows Media player) and iTunes 10.1 has been fixed with updates to both. Current iTunes is 10.1.1 and Flip4Mac is 2.3.6.5.

New MacBook Air models

2010-10-20T16:52:00.000-07:00

Today Apple hosted a live webcast, 90 minutes long, to preview their newest version of iLife 11, Lion (OSX 10.7) and their latest MacBook Air. Initially, the video required Safari 5 and OSX 10.6.4 to watch, but I just tested the replay on my Mini running 10.5.8 and Firefox 3.0.14. I don't have a Tiger Mac to test it on, but you should be able to view this using this link.

Nice as iLife looks, and the cool new features in Lion are impressive, the "One more thing..." revealing the new MacBook Air models was a jaw dropper. From being merely a niche product, the new portable can serve as your only Mac, with just a few limitations.

There are now two models, a 13" and an 11" model, the size of a netbook. At its thickest point it is 0.68 inch, tapering to .11 inch at the front. The 13" weighs 2.9 lbs; the 11" weighs 2.3 lbs. The screen resolution of the 13" is higher than the current Air as well as the 13" MacBook Pro.

There is no optical SuperDrive, like the current Air model. Want one? They have a $79 external USB drive. There is no hard drive. It was designed around flash memory storage, which on the smallest, cheapest model holds 64Gb data, and the largest can hold 256.

These smaller drives may be a deal breaker if you are used to carrying 100Gb of iTunes and 50Gb of iPhotos and movies. Those can be offloaded to an external USB drive but then you wouldn't have them with you so you might want an iPod if that's important.

USB-only drives are as low as $79 for a terabyte so if you don't have backups yet, now is the time to buy one. Set up to back up via Time Machine (10.5 and 10.6 only) the Migration Assistant can use this drive for data migration from your old Mac to the new one.

There is no FireWire. I am sad about this. People who already own FW drives for backup can use the USB port all those drives also have. It does mean that Target Disk Mode, which let you plug one Mac into another, is gone. Except when upgrading, this feature is seldom used anyway. It comes with two USB ports and a slot for an SD card, like their current laptops. Tiger Macs doing clone backups with SilverKeeper or SuperDuper can still plug in to the new one and do manual migration (drag and drop your files in the correct places).

The trackpad and the keyboard is full size. For desktop use you can use either USB or wireless keyboards, mice and trackpads. Printers can work either through your network or your USB port. If you have several USB devices you will want a powered USB hub.

The battery life is even better than before. The 13" will run for (up to) 7 continuous hours on the wireless Web (meaning visiting web sites that don't have videos that run it down quicker) and the 13" runs for 5 hours. Standby time (closed and in your bag or on your desk unplugged) is as long as 30 days. This is partly due to the flash storage and shares this kind of battery life with the iPad. The way most people use their laptops is an hour or two at a time, then close it until later. This will let the battery last you all day.

The processor is a little slower than the current MacBook Pro, but much faster than the current Air. The graphics card is about equal to the Pro. Both models come with 2 Gb RAM, upgradable to 4.

Price for this? Well, the original Air sold for $1799. A flash drive added a lot to that cost. The 11" model starts at $999, same as the white plastic MacBook (but the MacBook has a large hard drive, DVD drive and 4Gb RAM). The 13" Air starts at $1299, upgradable to a 256Mb drive for $1599. Add $100 each for the RAM upgrade and faster processor.

Other add-ons include a USB-to-Ethernet adapter for $29 so you can plug right in to a network if wireless is not available. AppleCare is $249. Since the only Apple external display is their 27" LED model for $999 (including camera, speakers, microphone and extra USB ports) you might want to buy a standard 21" to 24" DVI display without all those extras for under $250.

Once you stop thinking about all those extras, realize that for $999 you have everything you need (except AppleCare) if your needs are simple.

Watch the movie via the link above, or if it ceases to work just go to the Apple site and all the videos and descriptions you need are there.

Oh, one more thing 8-) The MacBook Air models are available today. If you order from the online Apple Store, they ship within 48 hours; the independent Apple dealers PowerMax.com, the Mac Stores and MacPac and others should have them by the weekend, as should the official local Apple stores. If I hadn't recently purchased my 13" MacBook Pro (which I still love) I would be on the horn for one of these today.

As always, I'll be available to help with setup when you get yours.

Yoru Fukurou Review

2010-09-10T16:24:00.000-07:00

System requirement: 10.5.8 or later

Free

Web site:

http://sites.google.com/site/yorufukurou/home-en

In the 18 months or so that I have been on Twitter, I have tried various Mac clients, settling on Tweetie for Mac in spite of its limitations. Tweetie was bought by Twitter and is now the official iPhone client (with a few problems of its own) but I have finally found the Mac client that does everything I need.

My biggest frustration with all previous Twitter clients was the inability to save more than a couple hundred messages. This meant that overnight, 3/4 of all posts were lost while I slept. YoruFukurou (Japanese for Night Owl, hereafter abbreviated as YF) does not throw away old messages. The longer you keep it open, the more it stores. When you quit and relaunch, you can have it reload up to the last 800 tweets in your timeline.

The only obvious limitation of the program is it supports just one account. This is not for people who juggle multiples. Still, since multiple Twitter clients can run at the same time without stepping on each other, one could set YF to serve your primary and Tweetbird Pro (for example) for the others.

What's so great about YF? The developer seems to have thought of everything. At the bottom right corner of the window is a number: APIs Left. Twitter allows you to access their database around 300 times an hour, and varies that during periods of high traffic. That number keeps you on top of your accesses remaining. At the bottom left is a green dot, which turns red when Twitter is overloaded, and a line of text that tells you what is wrong.

Select a message and open the Drawer (right button in toolbar) and it shows a clickable icon of the tweeter that expands to a full-size picture, their statistics (tweets to date, number following and followers), their web address and bio from their profile, and the text of the tweet, repeated. It also tells you when it was posted and using what client. A little triangle next to the name (both real and Twitter handle) drops a menu that lets you send DM, Report for Spam, Reply, and follow or unfollow. It also tells you if they are following you, and you can Block them from here.

Looking at the rest of the toolbar across the top, from left:

Home - opens your Twitter home page in your default web browser.

Refresh - Check for and load new messages.

Mark as Read - click this and all unread messages are marked as read.

View - three buttons: show entire timeline, show all messages by the selected poster, and show conversation (if the message is a reply to someone else).

Search - opens a search bar that will scan your timeline for any instances of your chosen word or phrase.

Below the toolbar is your message field. Click in here and type your tweet. It counts your characters. Click the gear icon and more functions appear: Shorten links, Stick Hashtags, Paste iTunes Track Name, Paste Safari Page Detail, Upload Image and Upload Screenshot. I have used only a couple of these features. You can upload any image on your hard drive. When you finish your tweet hit Return to send it. If you want to embed returns in the message, use option-return.

Below that is the row of tabs: Timeline, which tracks the number of unread tweets, Mentions, DM (Direct Messages), Favorites, which tracks what you have starred, and Search, which searches all of Twitter for strings, hashtags, or usernames. With all of this you will never need to go to the Twitter web page. Search also keeps a record of past searches.

In each tweet field is a picture, the tweeter's icon. If someone changes their icon in the middle of your stream, you see the old one in older messages and the new one in any new messages from them. Unlike Tweetie, I have never seen it fail to display an icon, regardless of how big the attached picture is. All of the other clients, including the web site, replace the old pic with the new. I like this feature.

Click on a link in a tweet, either in the main list or in the Drawer and it opens your browser to the page. If it is just an image from several of the image sites, it appears in a windoid right within YF. If it's a big image, it will fill up your screen.

Also in the tweet section of your timeline, a blue dot appears in the icon of an unread message, which disappears when you highlight it.

What doesn't it do? With all these bells and whistles, the one thing left out is Print. You simply can't print anything from it. Your only option is screen capture. I don't miss it; rarely have I ever wanted to print a time stream.

Preferences

I could write another article just based on the options in Preferences. YF has a sound mode that tweeps, chirps and tinkles at different events. This is a feature I turned off immediately. Color coding? each tweet colorizes itself based on the selected tweet - other posts become yellow, conversations turn pink; the text of your own postings is blue, neighbors backgrounds are yellow. @replies to you are in red text. It can become confusing but is easily ignored, yet gives you a visual clue that you might want to click on the Conversations icon.

You can leave the preferences in Default and as you learn the program, experiment. Growl is supported.

That's enough. You can spend weeks exploring this as you build up your twitter database.This is an OCD victim's dream.

Addendum: Since first posting this, there have been updates. The new version (2.3.1) uses User Stream Updates which gets all tweets in real time, without using any of the standard APIs. This will be a boon to anyone who uses this for their primary account and another program to manage their other accounts.

Pic 1: The YoruFukurou icon when not running.

Pic 2: The YoruFukurou icon in the Dock when running. The number displays waiting DMs and mentions.

Pic 3: The main window. You can expand it as deep as your screen allows.

Pic 4: Preferences window, tabs options

New Macs; System Updates

2010-07-27T16:38:00.000-07:00

New Macs

Apple has upgraded their iMac line, and also has a faster MacPro. Both use the new Intel i-series of chips, the i3, i5 and i7. Two of these have already appeared in the 15" and 17" MacBook Pros, so it was just a matter of time before they made it into the iMacs as well.

The fastest chip, a 3.6 GHz i5 is available on both the 21.5" and 27" iMacs, and a 2.93 GHz i7 is an option on the 27" only. Even though it has a slower clock speed, it's a quad core, which almost doubles the processing power.

The smaller one starts at $1195 and the other at $1695. They have four memory slots; both ship with 4Gb RAM but support up to 16 Gb (four 4Gb modules). You will spend some money for those. Base price for the 27" i7 is a buck shy of $2200.

The graphics chips go up in speed and quality with the price; the best 27" has the ATI Radeon HD 5750 with 1Gb of video memory. The better this chip is, the more performance you get out of the main processor. This is why the 13" MacBook Pro, even though it uses the same 2.4 GHz chip as the two-year-old 15" model is so much faster.

I maxed out the top model at the Apple Store, and found that I could get the works for $4415. That did not include any optional software beyond iWork and the $169 AppleCare. Visit the Apple Store site and see for yourself what those applications cost. This configuration includes two drives: a 2 terabyte SATA 7200rpm (amazing in itself) and also a 256 Gb solid-state drive. SSDs are faster than any mechanical drive can be, booting up in 2 seconds and loading Photoshop in just one. The package includes both the Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad, and the charger (see below).

I have been warned by others that Apple does not use the fastest SSD drives in the industry, though, so I would investigate just getting the 2Tb drive and then getting the SSD from Other World Computing for $89 more than Apple's.

Bottom line is that 80% of you will be more than satisfied with the cheapest and the leastest $1199 model with no options beyond AppleCare, and you will love the 27" to pieces. Extra RAM can be added later.

Magic Trackpad; Battery Charger

Two interesting products that never existed before are a battery charger for $29 (for their wireless mice and keyboards) and a standalone multi-touch trackpad that brings the same kind of control to desktop Macs as found on the new laptops. If I were a desktop user I would get one of these for sure. The Magic Mouse has multi-touch as well, but not the rotate effect, and the 4-finger swipe that brings up Expose.

There are battery chargers everywhere, of course, but the Apple device has a smart charger that detects when the batteries are fully charged and cuts the current, reducing the usual parasitic charge that such devices usually have: 30 milliwatts instead of over 300. Coming with six AA batteries, you will never have to buy a box of disposables again.

MacShop NW Leaves Portland

One of my favorite Mac shops has closed their Portland office, focusing exclusively on their Newport store. If you live on the coast, this is your best place for buying and fixing Macs from an authorized Apple dealer. Their site is http://www.macshop.com/. Locally, I still send people to MacPac on NE Whittaker Way, MacForce on SE Salmon St. right next to the river, and PowerMax in Lake Grove, which also contains the service center for the entire MacStore chain. MacPac does component-level fixing similar to what MacShopNW did, and is the place to go for oddball out-of-warranty repairs. The others are fine for AppleCare fixes and I don't recommend against any of them. This was not always the case, but it has been quite a while since I heard any customer complaints against them. The MacStore branches have a small service area where they can add RAM, replace hard drives, and the like.

System Updates

Not too many updates since last mailing. iTunes is now at 9.2.1, fixing bugs in the 9.2.0 version. The latest ones are needed for renting movies from the iTunes Store, and to support the iPhone 4 and the iPad. If you have an older iPhone or iPod and are having no problems with the iTunes you are using, there is no need to update it.

Safari 5.0 for Leopard and Snow Leopard seems to be behaving itself. I have had no problems with it, beyond minimal glitches loading Flash videos due to the fact that I am running Click2Flash, a great utility that prevents loading all those Flash ads unless you really want to see them. I find just a blank space where the video should be, so I have to right-click (or control-click) on the space and choose Load Flash from the popup menu. Hopefully there will be an update to Click2Flash soon.

Safari 4.1 for Tiger is another matter. So many people have problems I have put it on my permanent Avoid It list. Stick to version 4.0.5.

Sadly, Safari 3.1, the last good version of Safari 3, is getting obsolete and some web commerce and banking sites are refusing to talk to it. An alternative is Camino or Firefox, or Google Chrome. Everyone should have all these browsers available. Firefox is up to 3.6.8 now, and it seems to have fixed many of the troubles that bedeviled users of 3.5 and early versions of 3.6. My own second choice is Camino (google it) but I drop into Chrome occasionally as well. Once the Mac version of Chrome is at parity with the Windows version it will be a pretty hot browser.

Other updates all seem fine. Get the current Java and Security updates, firmware updates, keyboard updates and anything else that is being offered now. It's been a long time since I could say that.

One exception is Leopard 10.5.8. I am still wary of it, but it is increasingly necessary to get any of the others. If your Mac is at 10.5.7 and you have not received any messages that you must upgrade to use a desired program, stop there. I always cross my fingers before updating someone to 10.5.8, in addition to doing a full disk check with Disk Warrior and Repair Permissions with Disk Utility.

It is important to Repair Permissions after running ANY new software installation, and after running any updates. That includes Flash, printer drivers, scanner drivers, anything.

10.6.4 - Go For It

2010-06-27T13:36:00.000-07:00

I have been running the 10.6.4 update since release, while keeping an eye on MacFixIt and Macintouch to see who is having problems. The good news is, none for me and few for others. Apparently it does downgrade your Flash installation, though, so before you download the 10.6.4 Combo Update (huge!) get Flash 10.1.53.64 or newer from Adobe so you can install immediately after updating the OS.

New MacMini; Safari 4.1 has problems

2010-06-15T15:57:00.000-07:00

New Mac Mini

The PMUG meeting was last night but no one had a hint. This morning, Apple announced a revised MacMini.

I've been using my year-old version with my HDTV and it has worked just fine but it looks like the new one is destined to be a "real" AppleTV. It now has an HDMI port in the back, and a built-in SD card slot so you can plug your own video camera info right in. It also has the usual DisplayPort, 4 USB ports, FireWire 800, Ethernet and built-in AirPort.

This one is more efficient: smaller case, all aluminum uni-body like the other Macs, low power requirements, no "brick" transformer; just a power cord to the wall. The old one was $599 and $799; this one is $699 and you can boost the hard drive size, RAM up to 8 Gb and faster processor. If I weren't satisfied with mine I would be getting this.

Safari

Glad I warned you off of this update. The worst experiences have happened to Tiger users who upgraded to 4.1. I have had only a little trouble with 5.0 for Snow Leopard, mostly involving Click2Flash not properly rendering a video window. The fix has been to control-click on the white space where the video should be, and choosing Load Flash from the popup menu. Other sites offer no problems at all.

The serious issues with 4.1 seem to be caused by obsolete versions of Pith Helmet and SIMBL, add-ons that will need updating. Problems include frequent crashes or outright failure to launch. I have fixed them by removing all traces of previous versions of Safari and all bits of the add-ons. The current Click2Flash, once reinstalled, does work with the new version.

Safari 5, like Firefox, now supports proper plug-ins, so no dirty hacks will be needed any longer. We will start to see those appearing soon.

Bottom line is this: Tiger users, do not upgrade to 4.1 until there is a 4.1.1 or later update, and it won't hurt you to not update it at all. If you don't like messing with your system and aren't prepared to revert to a clone backup, wait until 5.1 is out.

10.6.4 is out

For God's sake, don't get this!!

Give it a week at least. Supposedly it fixes some of the problems 10.6 users have had with Adobe CS3. About time, I'd say.

There may be another security update. Again, wait. Don't do anything until July. Please.

New Safari released today (6/7/10)

2010-06-07T18:38:00.000-07:00

Here is the first clue that Apple is ending support for Tiger. An update to Safari that takes it from 4.0.5 to 4.1.0 is probably the minimum they can do to support HTML 5 and other updates, but the leap to Safari 5.0.0 is reserved for Leopard and Snow Leopard.

There is little to say on the Apple site about what features are new in this version, but it's no secret that Apple wants to make sure they fully support all alternatives to Flash without abandoning it completely.

I'm downloading it now, and I will probably install it and start using it immediately, but not before making a clone backup that will let me revert to 4.0.5 if it turns out to be a total toad. Remember, unlike Firefox, it is impossible to remove all parts of Safari and downgrade to a previous version. If you don't want to risk it, wait a few weeks and see what happens with other users.

Oh, and in other news, Apple released a new iPhone. Looks pretty nice. 3GS users can get the new OS and will not be denied any software features of the new one. If you have been waiting on the phone, remember that the unlimited data plan is history but unless you plan on subscribing to Netflix for iPhone, you probably won't need that much bandwidth. ATT claims only 2% of their users burn through that much data, but they're probably exaggerating and it's closer to 20%. They have finally decided to sell us tethering capability (using the phone as a modem for your laptop) but the price they want seems hardly worth it.

I'll let you know immediately if Safari turns out to be a turkey, and after a couple of weeks if I have no trouble with it.

Summer Update

2010-05-28T12:18:00.000-07:00

Happy Summer (Summer? Where?)

It's been way too long since I sent out one of my update reports. Partly that's good news: it's been many months since Apple screwed up one of their updates badly enough to require warning.

My rule to hold off for a week or two before updating still holds true, but right now there aren't any updates you need to avoid. Even the dreaded 10.5.8 update seems to have stabilized due to incompatibilities with others having been fixed.

When it comes to full system updates it is still best to visit Apple's download site and get the Combo Update. For Tiger, that's 10.4.11; for Leopard that's 10.5.8 and for Snow Leopard, it's 10.6.3 v1.1. The last was an update replacement to fix trouble with the original 10.6.3 and it's what you will get if you simply download that update. Combo Updates are still superior to Delta Updates because they contain every piece of updated software and are capable of taking any version of their system to the current release. Deltas contain only the minimum needed to take you from the previous step: 10.4.10 to 10.4.11; 10.5.7 to 10.5.8, etc. and sometimes fail where the Combo will succeed. Software Update always uses the Delta if it can.

New purchasers of Snow Leopard ($29) will find the disk in the stores is now 10.6.3. Before it was 10.6.0 and you needed to update it immediately. It is still the same disk that's included in the $169 package bundled with the latest iWork and iLife. It WILL take you from Tiger 10.4.x to Snow Leopard (Intel Macs only) but you run the risk of making Apple's lawyers unhappy.

Leopard users: One of the reasons I kept you on 10.5.6 was to prevent an update to Safari 3.2 from happening. That Safari version was buggy and crashworthy. 3.1.2 was the last good version of Safari 3. Apple did fix it a little bit by the time 3.2.3 came out, provided you turned off the Security feature "Warn when visiting a spurious web site." Any failure to connect to that database while browsing would crash the program. It's still problematic in Safari 4, and for the same reason. Safari 4 itself, however, is clean, fast and works very well. Current version is 4.0.5 and is available to users of Tiger, Leopard and SNL. Leopard users must be at 10.5.8 and have the latest Security Update to install it. Safari 3.1.2 is now sufficiently obsolete that some web sites, mostly commerce and banking sites, will refuse to deal with it.

Users who are still on 10.3.9 cannot get any version of Safari newer than 1.3.2 and no commerce site will talk to it. Ebay and Craigslist reject it as well. Your only option is Firefox 2.0.0.20, which is still on the Mozilla site and will hold you for a little while longer until you can upgrade your Mac.

Security Updates have been among the bigger causes of installation problems. Some were so bad I put them in the Never category. These updates always supercede previous ones, and I'm happy to report no problems with the current lot. There are a handful of weakness and vulnerabilities in the MacOS - though nothing like in Windows - but they are there and you should get current on them just in case.

Application updates are purely voluntary. If you don't use iWeb or iMovie/iDVD then don't bother. They will always be available. You also don't need to update iTunes if your current version works for you, unless you get a new iPad, iPod or iPhone. Or rent movies from the iTunes Store. The current version is 9.1.1. Just close or disable the annoying "Genius" feature unless you have found it useful.

New Apple TV

Rumors today speak of a new version of the AppleTV for only $99! This will be a major redesign of the mostly-failed and barely-useful current one with its stripped-down version of the MacOS. The new one will be more like a screenless iPhone. It's still a rumor, but the hope is that it will connect to Netflix, just like the iPad does, as well as the iTunes Store. This will be the first time Apple has changed one of its products from OSX to the iPhone OS. Now I'd like to see a tablet that runs a fully capable version of MacOS, and supports wireless mice and keyboards as well as on-screen touch control.

To follow the developments keep an eye on The Unofficial Apple Weblog and Engadget. The latter is a great site for all things tech, not just Apple.

MacBook Pro 13"

I have been living with mine for almost two months now, both as a portable and as a desktop plugged into a 24" ASUS external display. I still marvel at what a nice Mac this is. It's much less of a burden to schlep around than my previous 15" model was so I carry it more places. Even though the 2.4 GHz processor is the same as I had before, the new graphics chip makes it appear MUCH faster, especially when driving the external display.The key advantage, though, is the new longer-life battery. I used to worry about running out and always carried the charger, adding weight. Now, with 5 or 6 hours routine, I have not come close to running out, except for when I spend a lot of time on YouTube, where I can expect less than 4 hours because it runs up the processor a lot more. For $1199 or less it simply can't be beat.

Maintenance

All those updates, and any new software installations, require certain maintenance operations be performed. Most important is the Repair Permissions operation in Disk Utility. For details, open the program (in the Utilities folder) and read the Help file for the simple step-by-step procedure. For system updates, do this both before and after you run them. For all else, run them after. Then click on the Verify Disk button in the same window to make sure there are no disk directory errors that could cause the updates to make your system break down.

There are more robust disk-repair programs that I use when trouble exists. I also like to clear out all caches as well. On most of your Macs I have installed AppleJack, a program that runs in the command line interface before startup. To use this, restart and hold down the Command and S keys. Release when black & white text appears on the screen. When you get a prompt (and text stops flowing), type the phrase "applejack auto reboot" without the quotes. Then hit returns. Five maintenance procedures run themselves without further input from you, and then restart your Mac.

Clear that Desktop

Slow startup? I have seen Macs with upwards of 40 items on the desktop. Files and folders must be loaded before the Finder can proceed, so if you are wondering why it takes so long to finish the startup, that may be why. Put all documents and folders into your Documents folder and leave all applications in the Applications folder. Aliases do not count at startup so you can make aliases of those files and folders you like having out on the Desktop for convenience's sake. I do training as well as repairs, so if you want to learn more about how to use aliases and other strategies to improve your Mac experience, contact me for a session.

If it's been a year or more since I've seen you, it's time for a general checkup. There are things that develop over time that require attention and, if not caught in time, can lead to you losing data. Two or three times a year I'm called out to fix a non-running Mac only to discover that it's so bad that it isn't recoverable any more. Everyone should be running an external hard drive that backs up at least once a day so you are protected in case this happens. LaCie is holding a sale right now on refurbished hard drives with fantastic prices. Never buy a drive that is USB-2.0 only unless you have a MacBook with no FireWire port. They simply don't work as well.

-30-

More on Updates

2010-04-05T11:48:00.000-07:00

Snow Leopard 10.6.3 Update

The reports are coming in: There are glitches with 10.6.3 but it seems to NOT be a disaster. Some are just silly, like this one:

"Have noticed that the snow leopard background picture has changed. Under 10.6.2 as you looked at the picture there was 'red blood' on the right side of his mouth - now under 10.6.3 there is not the blood :)"

My own update has worked just fine. The Magic Mouse seems a little more touch-sensitive, with the cursor jumping as I first touch it. Not a problem with the trackpad. Others reported similar sensitivity before the 10.6.3 update.

One user reported that it broke FileMaker Pro 9 for him. If you use this, I recommend cloning your drive so you can revert to 10.6.2 if this happens. I always recommend having cloned backups in addition to TimeMachine backups for this very reason. TimeMachine is a great backup program but it won't do this. On the other hand, I installed 10.6.3 on a Mac running FM Pro version 8 and it worked fine.

Logitech mice seem to become hard to control under 10.6.3, but those have always been oddball and hard to control. The best all-around non-Apple mice I find to be those made by MacAlly.

Photoshop CS3 had been having issues in Snow Leopard before, but it gets worse for some people under the update. If you are at 10.6.2 and Photoshop CS3 is working for you, I suggest you hold off on this. CS5 is coming out this month and includes some amazing new features. You'll be glad you skipped the CS4 upgrade. CS4 works fine under 10.6.3. Strangely, CS2 also works fine under the update.

I highly recommend reading the Reader Reports on Macintouch about the 10.6.3 updates if you plan to tackle this update yourself.

Other Updates

iTunes 9.1 is out and some users have reported glitches. There is no reason to get this unless you are buying an iPad. Give Apple some time to fix iTunes.

The QuickTime update to 7.6.6 has caused some Leopard users playback problems, such as no video but sound plays in some movies. I am running QuickTime 10 now, which comes with Snow Leopard. It offers an optional installer to downgrade to QT 7 on the DVD, but I did not do that. If you are using QT7 under 10.6.2, you get this update automatically.

The Security Update for 10.5.8 has not produced much negative reaction yet. It may be safe to go ahead.

AirPort Base Station Updater

Update 2010-001 for the Airport Base Station fixes a security glitch where someone may be able to access a secured network, if the user has extended it with an AirPort Express. People do this to make their network cover a larger area, even though it causes a drop in connection speed. If you have not done this the update is probably not necessary. No trouble reports yet. Available through Software Update.

Safari 4.0.5

Installed on mine and several client Macs so far. No reported problems with it. I recommend getting Click2Flash to manage the excessive and intrusive Flash ads you find on most sites. Doesn't block all ads, just the Flash ones.

iPhoto 8.1.2

No reported problems with this update.

That's it. More news when I get it. As always, contact me if you need assistance with these updates.

10.6.3; other updates

2010-03-29T15:42:00.000-07:00

This very morning Apple released Snow Leopard update 10.6.3. It's available via Software Update, or (preferably) from Apple's download page. I'm downloading it now.

As always, wait a week for the reports to come in, and for my own experience with it. I will be installing it today after making a clone backup of my hard drive so I can revert to 10.6.2 if I need to.

If you go ahead and do it, be sure to open Disk Utility and Repair Permissions, both before and after the update. For a list of the patches, fixes and updates, visit today's Macintouch as well as MacFixIt and Apple's own site.

Also coming is iTunes 9.1 with support for the iPad and the Books section of the iTunes Store. I'm going to skip the iPad thing simply because I kept track of the web sites that use Flash that I visit regularly (excluding video sites) and found too many to make the Pad a useful device for me.

Your mileage may vary. A lot of people will love it immediately. If you are an early iPad adopter I would be interested in hearing your experiences with it.

Also released today is a Security Update for users of 10.5.8 (2010-002). It contains the same security patches as the ones in the Snow Leopard general update, but since Apple has made more mistakes with security updates than any others they have issued, I quarantine this for an absolute wait of at least two weeks before installing it.

There is no corresponding security update for Tiger 10.4.11, which appears to no longer be supported. Some of you still dependent on Classic OS9 applications must stay with Tiger and PowerPC Macs forever, so be aware of that as you look toward future upgrades. Leopard abandoned support for Classic and Snow Leopard abandoned support for AppleTalk printers.

Most people (including me) who want to keep access to these old programs and equipment have an old Mac dedicated to that service, which you will want to keep in good shape with utility repair programs such as Disk Warrior 2 and Norton Utilities 7. Fortunately, old Macs can be had for next to nothing, with G3 iMacs going for about $70 at FreeGeek and Craigslist, and older SCSI models like the beige G3, the 7600 and the SE-30 showing up in thrift shops. If you use one, start shopping around for a backup unit; even these well-made models die eventually.

PS: Anyone need an old van for moving lots of people and/or stuff? I'm selling my 1990 Ford van conversion, which I no longer need now that I traded in my SmartCar for a Nissan Cube. See it at Craigslist.

YouTube fail; Safari 4.0.5

2010-03-13T15:33:00.000-08:00

The latest update to Safari is a few days old. It came on the heels of a problem playing YouTube videos, when all I could see was an Obsolete Flash comment and no video or way to bypass the message. This affected only Safari, and getting an update to Flash using the link in YouTube didn't fix.

The next day the 4.0.5 update came out so I installed that. Didn't help, but it didn't hurt anything else so it's okay to get that update if you are currently running any version of Safari 4, or 3.2.

Leopard users have to be running 10.5.8 to use Safari 4. I still prefer 10.5.6 as being trouble-free.

To fix the YouTube problem I went on YouTube's forum areas and asked what was going on. Others reported it too, and the 3rd answer was the fix:

Open Safari preferences
Click on the Security button
Click on the Show Cookies button under the Accept Cookies area.
The next window has every cookie saved. Click on the Search field, upper right corner.
Type in YouTube. This should reduce the list to less than a page.
Click on Remove All.
Click on Done.
Make sure the 3rd button "Only from sites I visit" is the one selected.
Close Preferences. YouTube videos should play properly now.

Note to Snow Leopard users: 10.6.3 release is imminent. Apple will probably release it at the same time as the new laptops some time this month. As always, do NOT let Software Update install this. Wait at least a week and I and others will have had time to test it for problems.

When it's time to install, go to http://www.apple.com/downloads and search for 10.6.3 Combo Updater. Download the Disk Image (.dmg) file and run the updater from there. As always, run Disk Utility first and Repair Permissions, and Verify Disk. After the installation Repair Permissions again.

Mac Pro adventure

2010-01-16T17:14:00.000-08:00

My favorite client calls are the ones with unusual problems. Today I visited a Mac Pro that was having startup problems. The owner was quite good at his own maintenance and repairs and had done all the tests I usually do. The symptom was a refusal to get past the blue screen to the desktop. It reacted to a reinstall of Leopard, but with updates it went back to failing. Finally it wouldn't start from the DVD.

Aha, I thought, typical example of problems with the 10.5.8 update. Nope, I could not get it to start from my FireWire drive running 10.5.6, or another volume running 10.6.2. It wasn't a graphics failure because it would correctly display the startup alternatives from holding down the Option key.

Thinking it might be loose RAM or something, I went to reseat the modules, but he told me he had already tried that.

So I pulled his drive out completely. I wanted to boot ONLY from my external drive with no chance of interference from plugged in devices. That didn't work either.

I noticed something strange when I peered into the case, which was under a table and not immediately obvious. I looked at the back and yep, every slot was filled with a display card! He was running a standard 30-inch display, but he had the capability of running EIGHT displays.

"Did you order this with all those video cards?"

"No, this was a standard order from the online Apple store, in September of 2007."

It had been working fine up until the Software Update, all these months, with all those cards in place. A video card is supposed to be inactive until a display is plugged in, but something must have happened to one of them as a result of the update. So I removed all three of them, leaving the standard one he had been using all along.

It booted perfectly from my FireWire drive. I shut down and plugged his internal drive back in, removing mine. It booted perfectly. No repairs needed.

He still has no idea why he got a Mac with all those extra cards, but they will wind up on Ebay once he tests each one to see if one is dead and causes the problem to return. Outside of some headaches, he will come out ahead selling the cards and deducting my fee for the visit. Took me just under an hour.

New Year Catchup

2010-01-09T17:07:00.000-08:00

February Macworld Magazine

Buy the February Macworld magazine. This issue contains the Macworld awards for best Mac software, hardware, and iPhone apps. I found three good ideas on the first page. Examples: Acorn 2.1, an inexpensive but powerful image editor. Looks better than Photoshop Elements and, at $50, is cheaper. Wacom's Bamboo Fun $199 tablet is not only a drawing pad, but also reads finger gestures like a trackpad.

They also recommend the Iomega Media Network Hard Drive, a standalone drive that plugs into your network and serves iTunes, BitTorrent, iPhoto and TimeMachine. Iomega lost market share with their dying Zips, the Jaz drive fiasco and their less-than-reliable portable drives, but this unit impressed the editors so much they gave it 4 mice (out of 5). Every Macker should subscribe to at least one physical magazine, and this is a good choice. (I also subscribe to MacLife.)

Net Neutrality Hearing
Thursday is the last day for comments from us to support net neutrality. We need this in law so Concast and other large providers can't pick and choose which web sites we can see, or download quicker. Without it, the freedom we have now will wind up like broadcast TV: 95% junk and little chance to control it. Sure, the web is 95% junk now, but nobody is gatekeeping to prevent us from finding the gems, and the information we want. To send an e-letter, visit here: http://bit.ly/6NW4pz. Please spread the word.

Software Updates

There have been a lot of little updates lately, but not much serious since the 10.6.2 update a couple of months ago. A partial roundup of where you should be:

Snow Leopard:
Get the 10.6.2 update. Each update has improved 10.6 over the last. Wherever you are, get here.

Leopard:
Stop at 10.5.6. Don't get 10.5.7 or 8. If at 10.5.7, stop there. The 10.5.8 update was quite unstable and prone to crashing. Unfortunately if you want to update Safari to version 4, you have to be running 10.5.8. This is the end of the line for any G-series Mac as 10.6 requires Intel processors.

Tiger:
10.4.11 is the end for Tiger. If not there, let Software Update do it, or go to Apple's site and download the Combo Updater for 10.4.11. This will let you update Safari to version 4.0.4, but I recommend stopping at 3.1.2.

Panther:
10.3.9 is the end of the line for that. There are no updates worth getting to anything once there, no matter what Apple says. You are very limited as to which web sites will work with Safari 1.3.2, and Firefox 2 is as new as you can run.

Safari (any OS):
If you are using any version of Safari 4, get 4.0.4. Off to a weak start, Safari 4 keeps getting more stable. Be sure to go into Preferences and click Security, then uncheck the box for "Warn when visiting a fraudulent web site." While this is a good idea, it is still poorly implemented and crashes it often.
Safari 3.1.2: Stop here. Safari 3.2 was a bad update. If already there, do the same Security fix as above.

Firefox 3.5:
For the first time, the Mozilla Project screwed up with this upgrade. Many people report that it now crashes or freezes when it never did before. Stay with version 3.0, but update within. At the moment, current version is 3.0.16. If you got 3.5 but still have the installer for 3.0, I recommend you throw out 3.5 and reinstall 3.0, then let them update to 3.0.16. I wish it were this easy to downgrade Safari. Staying with 3.5? Do all the updates for it.

Google Chrome:
This new browser is missing a few features available in FF and Safari, but is still a nice addition to your browsing collection. While I use Safari for everything important, Chrome is fun to use.

Camino:
This browser uses the same engine as Firefox but has a number of nice features. My favorite is the toolbar, which can support multiple rows, instead of just forming a menu off the right edge like the other browsers do.

Saft and Click2Flash:
These plugins work only in Safari and are the reason I stick to it. Click2Flash blocks all those annoying Flash animated ads on web pages, and display them only after you deliberately click on them. It can be configured to allow specific sites to display all Flash (like YouTube), but I still prefer having to click to activate a particular video.
Saft adds some features Safari needs, like remembering and reopening all the windows and tabs from a previous session after a crash or mass quit. It does strange things to multiple-tab windows when you close each tab, though: It does not close them in order. Annoying but not impossible.

PithHelmet:
Ad blocker for Safari. Recently released a version for Safari 4. Visit http://curlater.net to download installers for it and SIMBL, required. Also blocks Flash ads from loading and offers a Reload Unfiltered option in its menu in case the page is negatively affected by the ad blocking (it happens).

Security Updates:
Apple has messed up here so often I simply don't bother with any of them. I get more service calls to fix things after a Security Update has been applied than all other causes.

AirPort:
There are updates to both AirPort Utility and AirPort Client. OK to get them.

Java:
Get all of the Java updates offered. So far, no problems with any of them. They are necessary for interacting with some Web sites that depend on it.

27" iMac Graphics Update:
This newest model Mac is just amazing, but a few had problems with unstable screen display. This update fixes/prevents them. If you have one, get the update. If you still have flashing, call AppleCare.

QuickTime:
Current is 7.6.4 for Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard. If you have 7.5.5, stop there unless you need the video and movie capabilities of iTunes 9. If you have an older QuickTime and experience no problems with web videos and don't use iTunes for anything but playing music, don't update.

iTunes:
Stay where you are if it works for you. If you get a new iPod or iPhone, you need version 9. You also need it if you want to rent movies from the iTunes Store, or view TV programs even without an iPod. Turn off the "Genius" function. Mostly annoying and useless. Explore it if you like but deactivate it in Preferences and close the sidebar if you don't use it.

Keyboard Update:
There are updates to the chip inside Apple's new aluminum keyboards, both wired and wireless. OK to get them. Don't know why they're needed; never run into any problems in un-updated keyboards.

Bluetooth Updates & Firmware Updates:
Various versions of these are released for both laptop and desktop models. I have not had one ever fail on me. Go ahead and let Software Update put them in.

Repair Permissions
I have stressed this many times, and demonstrated the process for everyone I have visited. It is important that you do this before and after running software updates, and installing new programs.

Briefly, launch Disk Utility (in your Utilities folder, accessible from the GO menu in the Finder) and select your hard drive from the list on the left. When the DiskFirstAid window appears, click Repair Disk Permissions from the button on the lower left. Once finished, you can either quit, or click Verify Disk from the button on the lower right. You cannot Repair Disk from here, though. If you get a Failed to Verify, get in touch with me.

_____

Quicken alternatives

Quicken support for Mac, which has been awful for a decade now, is pretty much over. Macintouch.com has a reader discussion of alternatives and the future. The next MacOS will probably not support Rosetta, which allows non-Intel-native programs to run. Read here: http://ff.ly/kchhkh. I am still using Quicken 2006 but some day I will have to switch too.

_____

Brother printers

I withdraw all support and recommendation for Brother printers. I am finding that even older models that seemed to work become squirrly and unreliable when combined on wired and wireless networks. Even HP, which had been seriously slacking in their Mac software department, are easier to set up and more consistently reliable. Canon's inkjets and all-in-one printers are still my top recommendation.

_____

I am amazed by how cheap color laser has become. I have seen some advertised in Fry's for under $150. That's less than a set of replacement cartridges. It's almost cheap enough to take a risk and get one just to see if it is as good as one would hope.

If any of you reading this own one of those low-priced color laser printers (under $400) I would love to hear of your experience.

_____

Got a G5 iMac? More and more of them are succumbing to the bad-capacitor problem, which is not repairable without replacing the logic board at a cost of $hundreds. Not all of them are dying but there is no way to know which is which, either by checking the serial number or visually inspecting a working board.

I recommend dumping yours and getting one of the new ones. Trade in your G5 to a place that offers trades (like MacPac and PowerMax) or just put it on Craigslist while you can truthfully and ethically state, "It's working fine. No known problems."

Once it starts to go you have a boat anchor, but as of Jan 1 that's illegal. All of the G4 iMacs are okay. Getting old, but no inherent problems like the G5s.

_____

Moving to Leopard from Tiger? If you have been backing up (cloning) with the program SilverKeeper from LaCie, you have to switch to SuperDuper. The newer version of SilverKeeper is a failed product and version 1.1.4 does not create functioning, bootable backups of Leopard or Snow Leopard. Another good cloning program is CarbonCopy Cloner, which is free. SuperDuper is $28 for the "Smart Backup" feature. I wish LaCie would try again to make a simple and effective backup program like SK 1.1.4 was, but so far they seem to have moved on. They do not include SK 2.0 with their new drives, so that tells you how much respect they have for their own update.

Please, LaCie, contradict me or prove me wrong. I liked SilverKeeper.

______________

That's it for this long-overdue post. Have a great 2010, everyone. News updates as they happen.

I'm on Twitter @mklprc. Without Twitter I would not have seen this great animation: http://bit.ly/4KgmI5.

My take on the new Macs

2009-10-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

Surprise, surprise. For the "benefit" of everyone who has bought a new Mac in the last month, Apple today released new iMacs, a new version of the polycarbonate $999 MacBook, and a new mouse.

The cheaper iMac ($1199) is 21.5", with a resolution of 1920 x 1080, the same as HDTV. This means you have a pixel-by-pixel display that perfectly matches the HDTV that a video will be shown on. There are going to be a lot of videos produced as a result of this machine. Buy the $1499 model and you get Apple's fastest processor, a 1Tb drive, and higher-end graphics processor. Spend $1699 and move up to a 27" model with Apple's fastest processor and 2560 x 1440 resolution, the same as their 30" Cinema Display. The most expensive model, $1999, actually offers a less powerful processor but the most powerful graphics chips available. Professional graphics people will not be unsatisfied with either of these models, if you can believe the specifications.

All iMacs come with wireless mouse and keyboard. I think this is a bad idea for reasons I have stated before: Certain repair and maintenance operations (such as zapping the PRAM) do not work with wireless keyboards because they lose their connection to the Mac. Therefore I recommend everyone who gets one of these also buy a cheap keyboard and mouse to keep in a closet until they are needed.

Apple proved they are still committed to offering a low-priced laptop by making a major design improvement in the case. It's lighter than the old one, faster, and has a better battery that gets as much as 7 hours on a charge. Expect less if you watch YouTube videos, play DVDs or other processor-intensive activities.

Down side: Once again they have dropped the FireWire port. It has but two USB ports, an audio in-and-out port, and a mini DisplayPort for an external monitor. Call me old-fashioned, but I insist that FireWire is vastly superior to USB-2 and would not have any Mac without it. Still, since Intel Macs can boot off of a USB-2 backup drive, new owners can get by without FireWire. Just bear that in mind.

The mouse LOOKS amazing. No buttons (of course; Jobs hates buttons) but the entire surface is touch-sensitive and supports multi-finger gestures like the trackpads do, and also can track correctly on glass or solid-color surfaces, not possible with older laser mice.

If you ordered but did not yet receive a new Mac that has been replaced by these models, call and immediately cancel, or verify that your order will be changed to the new model at a matching price. Apple usually allows that, but may not extend the service to all Mac dealers not actually owned by Apple. Those older models should still be available for a while at a reduced price.

See the whole mess at Apple's site.

Brother printer setup nightmare

2009-10-04T13:18:00.000-07:00

For the last few years I have been recommending Brother laser printers, based on the reports of owners rather than personal experience. When my Apple LW 630 became obsolete due to the end of AppleTalk in Snow Leopard, I decided to take my own advice and went to Fry's to get one.

They had two models in the 2100 series: USB-only and USB/Ethernet/Wireless. I got the wireless one for $149 (same cost as at Staples) and then set about on a nightmare of phone calls and retries with their tech support.

First the "wizard" failed. It installed the drivers, but was not able to connect to the wireless router. It worked with USB, but I found out that, unlike most every printer on the market, it did not work with USB hubs, powered or unpowered. I don't have enough ports on my MacBook Pro to permanently dedicate to a printer, and although wired Ethernet was an option, I wanted to be able to print from anywhere in the house.

Call #1 to their tech support, the only number available, led to a 19-minute wait and a series of dumb questions from the robot before I got a human. It took another ten minutes for him to determine I had to talk to the Mac specialist. He would transfer me. Was there a direct number to him? He knew of no other number to call and could not transfer me to a supervisor who did.

He switched me to that department, which resulted in a robot that told me that I had called after hours (in reality, they did not close for another half-hour) and left me no transfer or leave-message options. It just hung up. A second attempt, informing the first guy what happened when he transferred me, wound up with the same results. I gave up. Time on phone to accomplish nothing: 1:15.

The next day, after 20 minutes of robot time I got the same place and same results, with the same series of dumb robot questions. The guy transferred me but this time I got someone who at least was there and answered the phone. He had a different series of setup steps from the ones in the documentation but again the same results. No wireless connection but a dozen pages wasted every time I would reset the printer and get the desired page that told me the connection had failed. It was data on the 3rd page I needed. Was there a way to get only that page? Nope.

He told me to double-check what kind of security I had on the wireless router (WPA2) and try again. He emailed me a link to the document that outlined the same set of steps we had tried. Twice more I tried and both times I failed; it would not connect to the router.

The 3rd or 4th callback led to them kicking me upstairs to a "product specialist" who would call me back. He did not call that day. Could I be simply transferred to him? No, they had to send in my request via internal email.

He called the next morning, Thursday (I had started this process on Monday) and I told him the history and we tried again. I told him, screw it, what would happen if I just gave up and unsecured my wifi connection? Go ahead, he said. Another eight test pages later it finally worked! It was never able to store and use the network password, but it was able to successfully establish a connection to the router and has worked ever since. If I want security now I simply have to turn off the router when I am not using it.

If I had been billing myself for the time invested in this setup it would have been over $300 for a $149 printer. I will no longer be recommending this series of Brother printers without including this warning.

Installed Snow Leopard today

2009-08-30T20:35:00.000-07:00

The installation went really easily. Took 45 minutes on my MBPro, then a longish restart. I had a couple of auto-loading apps, so first request from the system was to install Rosetta, needed for older PowerPC programs.

First good news: Eudora works fine. So does Tweetie for Mac, and AppleWorks' word-processing module. Haven't tested the others because I don't use them. A couple of utilities have lost their registration preferences so I need to re-enter the serial numbers.

Second good news: The space-saving feature is real. I had 98 gigs on disk before, now I have 88 gigs. That's what I call efficiency!

Exposé looks different now. Windows in the Dock are exposed as well as the other open ones. If I don't choose a docked window, it goes back into the dock when I click another one. Dashboard does not appear to have changed at all.

Safari didn't change because I had already installed version 4.0.3.

Software Update offered only Backup 3.1.2 as a needed update. Backup is the worst program for that purpose I have ever seen; I thought Apple dumped it when releasing TimeMachine. I suppose they keep it around for MobileMe. I have yet to meet anyone who is happy with it.

iTunes gets updated to 8.2.1. If you are a Palm Pre owner and wanted to use iTunes to sync your music with it, Apple released this update to version 8.2 for the sole purpose of preventing you from doing that. With Snow Leopard you get it, want it or not. I guess I should see if it can be downgraded. That's the only thing wrong with 8.2.1.

Quicken 2006 opens and I can change data. This was originally not supposed to work under 10.5, but it seems only the online features stopped working then. I never use those features so I never noticed. If you use them, you should probably get Quicken 2007 or later, or a competing program.

The battery seems to be lasting longer, but it's subtle.

I will post more reports when I have more information. Meanwhile, I recommend visiting Macintouch at least to keep up with reader reports on the new OS. These are just my own observations.

Macs and the Heat

2009-07-27T15:48:00.000-07:00

You are not the only one suffering from Portland heat this week: Your Mac is too, along with your DSL/cable modem.

Many people have their Macs set up in a 2nd floor room or converted attic and believe me, it gets HOT up there. If it's too hot for you, it is too hot for your electronics.

As a temporary fix, you can aim a fan at your DSL modem to help it cool off. It does not have its own fan and relies on convection. If you have it covered up or tucked away, you can expect poor Internet performance and outright shutdowns. You can bring it back up by powering it off and then on again, but if it is hot to the touch, take steps.

I moved mine out of its niche onto a tabletop where I could aim an 8" clip-on fan at it and have had no trouble since.

I have installed on (I hope) all of my clients' MacBooks and Pros a copy of the SMC Fan Controller program that alerts you to your processor temperature (in the menubar) along with your current fan speed. If you drop that menu down you will be able to select higher speed. Do that if the temperature ever goes above 130. You will hear the fan, but it won't run down your battery more than a few percent faster and you will really need the cooling.

If you don't have it installed, go to the publisher's site and download it. Launch it, drop the menu down and set the Preferences to °F instead of C, the Default speed to 3000 or so and Higher to the maximum. Also check Load At Startup. Then click Save.

It should always load at restart.

Michael

PS: Please call me for an appointment if I have not seen you this year. Your Mac may be accumulating minor errors and other issues that could cause you grief in the future. Better now than some morning when it crashes and won't start up.

Mac commercial I'd like to see

2009-06-22T18:19:00.000-07:00

This is the commercial for Mac I would like to see Apple make:

(I can't remember the name of the guy who plays the Mac so I will just call him TWIT.)

TWIT: Hello, I'm a Mac.

HODGMAN: And I'm a Mac.

TWIT: Wait a minute, I'm the Mac!

HODGMAN: I've been learning from these ads and I decided being a Mac was better. I can run Windows whenever need to, and my life is so much easier.

TWIT: But I'm the Mac! You can't also be the Mac!

HODGMAN: I'm funny. People like me. I am a better Mac than you ever were and people think you're a twit. You're fired!

(Two security guards appear and haul off TWIT.)

HODGMAN: Now where on Earth are we going to find a PC?

Beware of potential damage from Bluetooth

2009-05-11T17:19:00.000-07:00

If you have any laptop Mac with Bluetooth connectivity, this info from Wired exposes a risk. See this article with settings for info. If you do not use any Bluetooth devices (wireless keyboards or mice, or direct links to iPhone or PDAs) be sure to turn it off in the Bluetooth menu or preference pane in System Preferences. It saves your battery drain. (So does turning off AirPort if you are on battery but not connected to a WiFi spot.)

To change the setting in your default Bluetooth settings, you must first turn it ON, then click the Advanced button, then in the drop-down menu uncheck the box "Allow Bluetooth devices to wake this computer."

From today's TidBITS:

**Bluetooth Default Setting Poses Risk to MacBooks** -- Wired.com's

Brian X. Chen reports on a potentially dangerous default Bluetooth

setting found on Apple notebooks. The setting enables a Bluetooth

device to wake a machine even if its lid is closed. For a user

packing a MacBook and Bluetooth mouse into the same satchel, this

default could result in an overheated disaster. (Posted 2009-05-08)

TidBITS is a valuable resource and I encourage everyone to get themselves a free subscription at http://www.tidbits.com/about/list.html.

Another Update, More Bugs

2009-02-17T09:35:00.000-08:00

Here we go again. A new Security Update from Apple and the first thing I read about is that people experience startup failures after installing it.

The first test I performed with it was on a G4 running 10.4.11 that had suffered from the bug that caused the Network pane of System Preferences to display a dialog box that stated "Your network settings have been changed by another application." This was so pervasive, affecting nearly everyone who installed it, that I put a permanent Avoid on the last security update.

I had hoped that such an affected system would be repaired by installing the new update. I had hoped that Apple had so many complaints about it that they would have fixed it.

No such luck. I installed the update but the problem remained. Then I installed it on my G4 tower, which had not had the previous update. Amazingly, it did NOT introduce the Network bug. While that is a good sign, I would still wait and see because so many are reporting trouble anyway.

Most common solution when there are problems: Hold down the Shift key at startup until you get the login window with Safe Boot in red. Then put in your password and finish the startup. Then do a normal restart. Safe Boot performs a number of maintenance operations and it can help a lot.

Other updates, such as the new Java update 3 for 10.5.6 (and 8 for 10.4.11) and ones for the iWork suite, have been shown to be okay. QuickTime 7.6 seems to fix problems for people running 7.5, but it isn't really needed unless you have a new iPhone.

Always have a wired keyboard

There are certain repairs that are not possible with a wireless keyboard because they can lose contact with the Mac at exactly the time they are most needed. If you like the convenience of wireless, be sure you can put your hands on your old USB keyboard when you need it.

Zapping PRAM, or resetting the parameter RAM, is one example. To reset this chip, which can contain corrupted data, requires you to hold down the Command, Option, P and R keys simultaneously through three restarts. As long as you hold down the keys, the Mac keeps restarting. After the third one, PRAM is cleared and you can let go of the keys, and some problems are fixed, such as high speed cycling of the fans on G5 and G4 Macs. If you try it on a wireless keyboard, you get one restart and then the Mac loses contact with the keyboard and you can't do a thing with it until it rediscovers the keyboard. If your mouse is also wireless, you can't even open the Bluetooth System Preference and force it to connect with your keyboard.

If you go wireless keep your wired devices, even if you have to go buy one.

Why I always advise you get AppleCare

2009-02-04T18:36:00.000-08:00

My year-old MacBook Pro decided to have a stroke last weekend: all the ports on the right side of the computer stopped working. On Monday morning I dropped it off at the Mac Store Service Center (in the PowerMax warehouse in Lake Grove) and was told they would either fix it there or overnight it to Apple. This morning I called to find out what they did and was informed they put it on the overnight that afternoon, and said it would take 7 to 10 business days. "Sometimes it takes less, but we are required to state the 7-10 number."

At two this afternoon I came home to a message on my phone saying "Your Mac is back." I called in, "What, already?" Yep, it was, only two day turnaround including shipping it off to the Apple service center. They replaced the motherboard and the total cost was $0. As it was just barely past one year old, I would have had to pay more than the $349 cost of AppleCare for this fix. Plus, I have almost two years more coverage to go.

That's why I always recommend AppleCare, without exception, but especially for laptops.

PS: The reports of problems with QuickTime 7.6 and Leopard Update 10.5.6 have slacked off, and the update has been certified by some of the developers of high-end Mac programs, most notably ProTools, as mentioned in an earlier post. I will put these updates in mine this week to see if I also have no problems from it. I also have two kinds of backups: one drive with a cloned copy and another with a constantly-updating TimeMachine backup.

If I have problems and have to restore to a previous version I will let you all know. Otherwise, go ahead and download the updaters from Apple's site - don't just use Software Update - and run them yourselves.

Updates To Avoid

2008-11-27T18:01:00.000-08:00

Apple has been busy in the last few weeks with updates to QuickTime, iTunes, Safari, and their old Security Update. Problems were obvious with some right away, but others took a while to discover.

Many of you did update when Software Update popped up and told you to, and things have worked correctly. You may breathe a sigh of relief.

The worst offender is the 2008-004 Security Update for Tiger (10.4). This has a bug that causes your Network pane in System Preferences to drop a dialog box that says "Your settings have been changed by another application." with an OK button. Click it and immediately it pops up again. This affects everyone running OSX 10.4.11, whether on an Intel Mac or a PPC Mac.

Fortunately, if you don't need to change your settings in this panel, your Internet connection will continue to work. You will even be able to switch between plug-in Ethernet cabling and wireless AirPort, and move your connection between other WiFi spots (your neighbor, a coffee house, work, etc.)

There is no fix. After going round and round with Apple on this recently, and being kicked upstairs to one of the people who really know what's going on, the bottom line is you have to do an Archive and Install reinstallation from your Tiger disk, and then run all the Software Updates again, EXCEPT for the offending Security Update.

Or just give up and buy Leopard 10.5, assuming your Mac has enough RAM and is fast enough to use it.

Safari - The last stable version is 3.1.2. There have been two updates, 3.2 and 3.2.1 since. Besides disabling add-on programs like PithHelmet (which blocks ads) and other input managers, the update is much more sensitive to misbehaving sites and crashes quite often. One workaround, if you have already gotten the update, is to go to the Safari menu and choose Empty Cache, then again and choose Reset Safari. Let it delete your entire history, saved passwords, icons, etc. This has been shown to help make it more stable. But if you are running 3.1.2 or older, stop there. This affects people running OSX 10.4.11 and also 10.5.5.

Leopard - I have had no trouble with the 10.5.5 update, compared to the stable 10.5.4 version that is on the store-bought DVDs currently available. (Previous store copies were 10.5.1, which replaced the notoriously buggy initial 10.5 release.) The notorious exception affects people using ProTools, the music composition suite of software. They have experienced display issues when updating to 10.5.5 and the only fix is to reinstall and then stop at 10.5.4.

QuickTime - The problematic version is 7.5.5. The previous 7.5 is pretty stable but if you have 7.3 or 7.4.5, don't update unless getting a new iPhone forces you to. Users are experiencing playback problems with the newest version on some web pages.

iTunes 8 - The latest is 8.0.2 but any version past 7.7 has introduced difficulties for some. The biggest problems have been experienced by people who store their iTunes library on a different hard drive from the startup drive. It loses track of the library data and usually requires recreating the library, which causes you to lose all of your playlists. Outside of a cool visualizer eye-candy effect, and a "genius sidebar" that takes note of what you are playing and suggests other songs you can buy from the iTunes Store, there is no advantage to iTunes 8. It's required, of course, if you have the latest iPhone.

The new MacBooks - The Defective By Design web site, an informational service opposed to DRM (Digital Rights Management, or copy protection), has listed the new MacBooks as #1 in their 35 Days Against DRM project. Read all about it at Defective By Design. It seems Apple has included a hardware chip in the new models that serves no function other than to make it impossible to play certain video formats that are deemed "the analog hole," or a format the movie and TV industry has decided you may not view.

I realize this affects very few of you, but if you want to rip video from your TV, or from a DVD, you have to go through extra hoops to make it work. It is a consumer-hostile act on Apple's part, and they should not be allowed to get away without hearing protest from their customers. This chip has not been included in any of their other models - yet.

Think about ignoring the new MacBooks

2008-10-19T16:49:00.000-07:00

Since the announcement that new MacBooks would not have FireWire ports, there has been a firestorm of criticism on Apple's chat forums and other blog sites. Other complaints have centered around the price increase for MacBook Pros.

Loss of FireWire means no more connecting to other Macs via Target Disk mode. ALthough all Intel Macs can boot off of USB-2 external hard drives, and all the drives I have been recommending for backup purposes have both ports, I cannot recommend the new MacBook to anyone without hesitation. But for that, it would be a great machine and an appropriate replacement for the old 12" PowerBook G4. Still, if you can't imagine ever needing FireWire to link two Macs together or to hook up a digital video camera, it is a worthy product.

Migration without FireWire is still possible if you have a cloned backup to one of these multi-port drives because it can read that same drive through the USB port.

According to Ric Ford of Macintouch, the best buy right now is to get a remaindered MB Pro from Amazon or other sources, at a savings of as much as $500 over the new ones. I have that particular model myself and recommend it without reservation.

The now-cheaper white plastic MacBook ($999) Apple is selling alongside the aluminum ones has been upgraded with a SuperDrive (writes DVDs too) which actually makes it cheaper by $300. It comes with only one gig of RAM, though, so if you buy this model, which still has a FireWire port, be sure to get at least two gigs RAM at time of order.

Besides price, I don't see any problems with the new MacBook Pro models, except you must buy an extra-cost DVI adapter to use them with an external monitor you already have or any non-Apple one you may buy. They are designed specifically for the new Cinema Display, which has built-in video camera and speakers. Assume the adapters will ad $20-$30 to the total cost. The 24" Cinema Display looks hot, though, and at $900 is not too far out of competition with other manufacturers, especially if you would actually use the video camera for video chatting or podcasting.

Avoid Fake CNN spam

2008-08-07T17:59:00.000-07:00

Slashdot and many of the other blogs (which you should scan now and then, btw) are warning people about a spam that is making the rounds called CNN Daily Top Ten. When you click the link, it takes you to a window that tells you that it needs to install a new version of the Flash player.

Naturally, that isn't Flash, it's malware. You can be certain that it is designed to infect Windows boxes, but it isn't known if it can also detect a Mac and serve malware just for us. We do know that there are some weaknesses in OSX and Safari that CAN be exploited, but not if this is one of them.

Bottom line: It's spam. Don't click it. I don't care how pretty or believable it looks. It is always out to hurt you so avoid it at all costs.

More on Epson

2008-08-07T16:44:00.000-07:00

One person responded saying I should not tar the entire product line because their tech support is awful and their little CD print program is garbage. He says that their higher-end professional printers are still excellent.

Good news, then. This is similar to HP in the sense that their high-end laser printers do not suffer from the same horrible software that their cheap laser and inkjets do. One would think they care about ALL of their customers, but I guess not.

That CD printer program probably works fine for people who have only one printer, plugged into USB, but I would look to other publishers for CD printing software. I know one comes with Toast and there should be others.

Worse news: The Canon printer that can handle CDs is sold only to Europeans. You may not have any other choice.

Forget about Epson

2008-08-07T14:37:00.000-07:00

Today I had a client with a new Epson all-in-one with the ability to print on CDs directly. They also have a wireless network with an AirPort Express that you can plug the printer into and print from anywhere on the network. It mostly works, but the client said the colors are not as good as her previous printer. This is bad news because Epson used to have the best color, even as their tech support went to hell.

Well, it's still in hell, at least India, and they were incapable of solving a problem with their super-simple CD/DVD printing program. It uses a non-standard print dialog box, and there is no way to change the printer! This is important, because there has to be two drivers: one for USB direct and one for wireless. Choose the wrong one and the print will fail with a "Can't find the printer" message.

It was like pulling fingernails to get the level 1 tech to even understand the problem: Everything worked correctly; it could print in all programs BUT their CD printer. After an hour battle and finally getting switched to a Level 2 tech, I still could not get satisfaction because he had no answers why the print window worked like it did. At best, we got the thing to default to wireless printing. The only choice they offered was to deinstall everything and give up on wireless printing entirely - create one print driver for USB and nothing else and maybe the CD printer would respect that.

Scanning won't work wirelessly because Epson can't write good software (like HP, even worse) yet I know it's possible because both the Canon and Brother all-in-ones do support wireless or network scanning.

I have been recommending against Epsons for a few years now, and this is just another reason to keep it up.

Another reason to avoid WD's MyBook

2008-08-04T18:20:00.000-07:00

There are several, not the least of which is a high failure rate due to overheating. But today I discovered that you cannot make them bootable, either via FireWire or USB (Intel Macs only). This is due to an obsolete chipset.

So, stick to LaCie D2 Quadra drives, or OtherWorld Computing's drives.

Avoid Adobe Reader 9

2008-07-05T20:32:00.000-07:00

Adobe has just released its update to Reader, and an important function has been removed: Documents that are forms with fields you can fill out can no longer be saved (SaveAs...) with the data typed in. It can print them, but it will save only the blank form. Reader 8 had no trouble with this, so do NOT install Reader 9, even if you get warnings from Adobe. It's hard to believe they would make such a stupid mistake; removing this feature must have been an intentional decision.

Keep an eye on Macintouch to stay current.

Lots of action lately

2008-06-24T18:44:00.000-07:00

Microsoft FINALLY released the converter so users of Office 2004 will be able to read the .docx and other -x documents created in Windows 2007 Office and Mac 2008 Office. Go get it here: http://tinyurl.com/4z2bfa and follow the instructions. I have not tried it myself because I already have 2008 (slow, dysfunctional turd that it is).

• • •

The notable exploit for Apple Remote Desktop has a couple of other solutions, which you can find on macfixit.com. Otherwise just wait for Software Update to announce a new security update, then wait a couple of days in case they screw it up badly and have to replace it, then install it.

• • •

This past week I have run into two Macs with dead FireWire ports. Nothing would show when plugged into them. In both cases, I was able to fix by resetting the PMMU chip. One was a G4 tower. On the motherboard there is a little button, about 1/3 inch square, with PMMU printed just below it. Get a flashlight and carefully scan over the board. The button is not covered up by anything, unless you have an AirPort card installed, which you should slide out part way if you can't find it elsewhere. Press this button for five seconds and then close up your Mac. Reset the PRAM by hitting the power button and immediately holding down the keys P, R, Command and Option. Keep holding down for three chimes, then release and let it come up normally. If that doesn't fix the port, then it is truly dead.

The other Mac was a MacBook and it was simpler: shut down, remove the battery and power cord, press the Power button briefly, then put the battery and cord back and reset the PRAM as described above.

There was a MacBook that also had the problem and nothing fixed it, so it was off to a Mac dealer to have it fixed under AppleCare. That fix will necessitate a new motherboard, which costs twice as much as the AppleCare contract. If your Mac is less than a year old and you haven't purchased AppleCare yet, do it now. Not only will Apple help talk to you for the entire three years, you will save major bucks if anything goes wrong with the computer.

Epson troubles

2008-06-13T14:25:00.000-07:00

Today I had to fix a recalcitrant Epson printer. It had been working for a while but then developed the dreaded "Lost contact with the printer" message. Tried reinstalling the drivers but when I went to the setup utility it did not show the newly-installed driver option.

Called Epson, with trepidation because I have been hearing that the quality of their support has been fading over the years, but had a good experience this time. Even though the tech called himself "Dave" he was obviously in India, or an Indian working somewhere else, but he was understandable. He was overly reliant on phrases like "Thank you for that information" but not impossible and we resolved the issue.

I had to completely remove all printer parts including the Epson Printers in the Library/Receipts folder, the two Epson .plist files in the Preferences folder and everything in the Epson folder in the Library/Printers folder. Then the reinstallation was successful. Still, in the Printer Setup Utility, I had to ignore the printer that showed up initially and choose More Printers, then the popup for Epson Firewire (yours may be Epson USB or Epson Ethernet) and only then did the correct driver show up and the install finish successfully. Sheesh.

The secret phone number to call them is 562-276-1300, which is not listed anywhere on their site.

Installing Leopard

2008-06-10T15:51:00.000-07:00

Stephan writes,

I attempted to install the update for Leopard but they said I didn't have enough disc space and that I should remove some of the stuff on my start up drive. I'm sure you know what that means, but I don't!

Yes, your disk is too full. It should never be more than 80% full and 50% is better. Too many iTunes songs or iPhoto pictures? Something is filling it up. Open the main HD window in list view, then go to View Options and check the box for Calculate All Sizes. Open up subcategories by clicking the little triangle to the left of each folder name. It will take a while but it will calculate the contents of each folder. Don't delete stuff you don't understand (like the Library) but if you find the culprit to be too many movies, pictures or iTunes, delete or archive somewhere else. Then you should be able to upgrade.

Dish Network (No Mac content)

2008-06-10T11:47:00.000-07:00

I should start off with a comment about a problem I have been unable to find an answer to: Dish Network chopping off the left and right sides of network programming. Before two months ago, most programs were sent out by the networks and broadcast in 16x9 wide-screen format. On conventional TVs, that would result in letterboxing - black bars at the top and bottom. Those with wide-screen TVs could zoom the picture to fill their screen. When viewing a normal 4x3 picture, they could zoom out so the pic would fill top to bottom and black bars would appear on the sides. All was fine and good.

The local stations are still broadcasting this way, but Dish users with normal (not HD) tuners are finding the picture cropped, obviously so, because credits, ad bugs and the like are cut off. So far, no one at Dish has been able or willing to explain why they started doing this and when they will go back to normal. I can't even verify if it's an Oregon phenomenon or national. The satellite/cable channels do not have this problem; if sent in 16x9 we see them in 16x9.

I'd love both an answer and a verification that this is happening to people around the country, and also if it is affecting DirectTV customers as well.

Welcome

2008-06-10T10:27:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Moonlight Mac weblog. This replaces my monthly column in ComputerChips magazine, now defunct. To read my past articles, visit the articles page on my regular site.

The appearance of this will change over time as I learn how to configure it. There will be a way to subscribe to it so you will be alerted when there are new posts. This will not affect, but may duplicate, the e-list of my clients who now get alerts and used to get my monthly column.

I will also answer Mac questions whenever possible. If you are in town and need a personal visit to get your Mac working, or just get it working better than it is now, contact me directly via email: mp at moonmac dot com.