November Update

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.

July 2013 Update

It's been a while since updating this blog, partly due to recovery from heart surgery in April, and partly because Apple has had no major failures with their software updates.

Speaking of the surgery, I'm about 85% fine now. Taking twice-weekly cardiotherapy at St. Vincent's and getting ever stronger. Been working normal hours since early June. The last 10% takes the longest.

1Password at PMUG Monday

I have written about this password manager before, and encourage anyone plagued with password problems (like forgetting them or losing the paper you wrote them on) or risking security failure by using the same password on all your logins.

So come to the Portland Mac Users Group meeting on Monday, July 8 when member Steve Riggins will demonstrate how to securely manage your passwords, credit cards, software licenses, and other information. We meet at 6:30 for Q&A and the general meeting begins at 7:30. We meet at the Ecotrust Center in NW Portland, 721 NW 9th Ave. Plenty of parking plus bus and streetcar service right to the place. You do not need to be a PMUG member to attend.

Issues

The biggest issue for some has been with AppleMail for those who were running Lion 10.7.5 and upgraded to Mountain Lion 10.8. (ML is now at version 10.8.4, which is what will be installed if you are upgrading for the first time now.) It demonstrated crashing, improper mail management and other quirks. It took a reinstallation of ML from the Emergency Repair volume it created from your Mac's internal drive.

There have been updates to Security and Java, which are important. You should always get those. Otherwise, waiting a week after you learn of an update will protect you in case Apple does issue a goofball. That gives me time to find out about it and warn you, and gives them time to discover their error and pull the update.

Other updates include support for iMovie, iDVD and the iWork suite of applications. It's okay to get those. Safari is still suffering from the "Force reload all webpages" bug that has been there since version 5.1. Snow Leopard 10.6.8 users can stop with Safari 5.0.5 and not experience the problem. Lion and later requires 5.1 so you're out of luck.

Most of you will never see the bug; it's triggered if you use the "Open in Tabs" feature, and also keep web pages open and in the Dock for more than a day or two. Unfortunately for me, I use that feature to read my daily web comics, and that opens a window with 21 tabs. Even at a fast (25 Mbps) connection, it takes several minutes for all those pages to load. When it does hit, your only option is force reload or Cancel and quit Safari. Start it up again and most of your pages should come back.

iTunes, naturally, is updated the most frequently, partly to support new features and iOS devices. I did not like the changes introduced in version 10 at first, but I have gotten used to them and now find very few things about it that annoy me. Those of you who don't have pads, pods or iPhones don't need the new version (unless you want to use the movie and TV-rental features) so you can hold out a little longer. Current version is 11.0.4.

The rest of the updates that show up, i.e. RAW Camera Update, Airport Utility, Remote Screen Sharing can be installed, but if you don't specifically need them you can skip. One exception is a class of updates called Firmware Updates. Those reprogram a chip on the logic board ("firmware") and should be installed alone. If you see a firmware update in the list from Software Update, uncheck all the boxes for the other updates and run this. After the restart you can relaunch Software Update and get the rest.

Repair Permissions

Finally, always run Repair Permissions with the Disk Utility app in your Utilities folder. Do this both before and after running the software updates. I wrote the how-to in my November 2011 blog, here: http://bit.ly/15mNWvI.

Dead OS Versions

Tiger 10.4 is long abandoned and Apple does not issue software updates for it any more. But for users of G-Macs (G4, G5) it's the last version that supports Classic OS9. If you still need that to access your oldest application documents, you will want to retire that Mac to a back shelf some day and just use it when needed. If you need to access MacWrite, early Quark XPress and HyperCard files, you need a Mac that can actually run under OS9; not just Classic. The last model capable of that is the white dome G4 iMac with the 15" screen, or the early G4 towers.

Leopard 10.5 is the last version of the OS capable of running on G-Macs with the PowerPC chip. Early Intel Macs could run Tiger (but not Classic) and Leopard. Apple abandoned support for Classic with Leopard. They still issue Security Updates for Leopard but for all intents and purposes, it's dead.

Snow Leopard 10.6 abandoned support for AppleTalk, which killed their workhorse LaserWriter Pro models, but still supported applications written for PowerPC Macs like Quicken 2006, Eudora, AppleWorks and MS Office 2004, among others, by including a block of code called Rosetta. Snow Leopard is still considered current and supported (after a fashion) but will be officially abandoned with the release of OSX 10.9 (called Mavericks - farewell to the cats) this fall.

There is an Excedrin headache plaguing 10.6 users, and me: I can no longer update any old version of 10.6 to the final 10.6.8 using my installers downloaded from Apple. This happened some time after a patch to 10.6.8 was released; there was an update to the updater that would not install unless 10.6.8 was running, but you could not update to 10.6.8 without it. That threw us into the mandatory hands of Software Update and if you had a weak or flakey Internet connection, the 1-Gb download of 10.6.8 would usually fail.

I used to tell people to stay with 10.6.8 forever so they could keep using their old apps, but soon you'll need to relegate your Snow Leopard (or Tiger) Mac to that same back shelf as your old SE-30. It seems that "forever" in computer years is just about five human years.

Lion 10.7 was the biggest change, with the end of Rosetta. If you are still using AppleWorks under 10.6 or older, open up ALL of your .cwk documents and do a SaveAs into either Word (.doc) or text (.txt) formats. AppleWorks is the only program that has NO modern equivalent and there is NO converter available. AppleWorks spreadsheets can be saved as Excel files, and the database info can be exported into tab- or comma-delimited text, readable by some modern database applications.

Mountain Lion 10.8 is current for the rest of the summer; not many apps need upgrading when it came out. Mostly, if it ran under 10.7 it worked under 10.8.

New Macs

If you've been following the Apple news, you've seen that they've upgraded the MacBook Airs, the 13" and 15" MacBook Pros, and announced a radically designed Mac Pro. Be tempted by these models, and the two iMacs that came out a few months ago. The Airs have a new high-efficiency chip that promises even more battery life, as much as 12 hours of gentle (no videos) use for the 13" and 9 hours for the 11" models. Both of them support any size external display and 256 Gb SSD (solid-state drives) so these can serve as your primary Mac. Plug in the external display and you have as much work area as an iMac; unplug it and take all of your files with you. Personally, I would feel chained to my desk if I had an iMac or Mac mini. Even if you seldom take your laptop anywhere, it's nice to be able to. Oh, and the Airs are both $100 cheaper than the previous model (which I have).

The Pro is amazing looking; a black cylinder that resembles a beer cozy for a can of Foster's. Fastest 12-core processor possible, multiple Thunderbolt 2 ports and USB 3; up to 60 (sixty!) Gb internal RAM and the fastest SSD storage on the planet. Load this down with everything and swap your Mercedes for it. Visit the Apple Mac Pro page and just marvel at it.

YouTube fail; Safari 4.0.5

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.

Lion Experiences, part 2

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?

New Macs; System Updates

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.

New Year Catchup

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.

Mountain Lion Experiences

I ran the upgrade from Lion to Mountain Lion today. It went smoothly; took less than half an hour. To prepare, I did a Repair Permissions on the drive with Disk Utility, and then ran Disk Warrior 4.4, the application I use to check and repair directories on all the Macs I service.

Sure enough, mine needed the run; the usual Volume Information Block error was found and fixed. Had I not done that first, the installation might have failed and rendered the drive inoperable. Simply put, you should always run Disk Utility before upgrading, even if only to Verify Disk. There may still be errors present, but it's better than nothing. Disk Warrior costs $99 and is a worthwhile investment for people who want to take care of their own Macs.

Upon restart, I was notified that two of my apps were not going to run in Mountain Lion: Little Snitch and Snapz Pro. Little Snitch has an update available, but Snapz Pro does not. According to the Snapz web site, some of the features work but others were disabled to prevent a kernel panic (that multi-language overlay that appears telling you must restart your computer now). I signed up for emails notifying me when the updated version would be ready.

It's nice that Mountain Lion can perform this check and disable incompatible software before it crashes your Mac.

Safari Back to its Bad Old Tricks

The problem that appeared to be repaired in Safari 6 for Lion has reappeared in Safari 6 for Mountain Lion. Right after the upgrade I went straight to my 25 "Open in Tabs" list of daily comics and there it was - the dreaded "Web pages are not responding" dialog I wrote about in my previous report.

That means that either what was fixed in Lion re-broke in Mountain Lion, or it was never fixed at all and I just didn't experience it during my brief test.

AppleMail - No Drag-Selecting

Previously I could select a range of messages in the INbox (or any other mailbox) by highlighting one message and then clicking in the white area between From and Subject and drag down. Not highlighting first would turn the cursor into an envelope, signifying that the message I had clicked on was being Moved somewhere, i.e. to a different mailbox. Also, dragging directly sideways would invoke the Move cursor.

Now the Move cursor is always invoked. If I want to select a range of items it requires a click on the first item and a Shift-click on the last, selecting the items in between. The usual Command-click on each item selects the item clicked without de-selecting the previously highlighted item. This has always worked that way, and is the same way you highlight items in the List view in a Finder window. I consider this change a loss in functionality.

I still have not found a keyboard command for "Open Next Message." Why something so simple and basic has not been implemented is beyond me.

Return of Save As...

Lion took away the SaveAs option that we have had since the beginning. Their substitution of Duplicate or Rename was confusing and less functional. Good news is that it's back. You must just hold down the Option key when clicking on the File menu to restore the command. To do it via keyboard, you hold down Command, Option and Shift keys while typing an S. That does the same thing.

Notes

At last, a simple app that you can use on your Mac to store any information you want also available on your iPhone or iPad. In the past you had to tie it to the notes in Mail, which were not reliably transferred to your iDevice and required opening Mail to access. This is a feature that existed in OS9 and before, a simple note pad under the Apple menu. Of course there were no iOS devices to sync to, but one could sync to a Palm device back then. Personally, I fixed the problem by keeping text files in Dropbox. That worked fine, but this is a more integrated solution and it is certainly welcome.

Overall

The best news is that I don't notice much difference in the general operation of my Mac at all since the update. It feels the same, runs just as fast, and Safari seems to be the same as it did in version 5.1.7 under Lion. I was really sad to see that it still isn't fixed.

There are a lot of articles and blog posts about Mountain Lion around. I would recommend you visit sites like Macintouch and MacSurfer Headline News and fill in your information with them. No need for me to reinvent their work here.

10.6.3; other updates

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.

Summer Update

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-

(Jan. 7) 10.6.6 Installed

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.

Lion Part 3, Updates, iTunes Story

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.

My Experience with Lion, part 1

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.

Lion 10.7.4, 3 Weeks On

I took three weeks to live with this update because I wanted to see the reports and followups from other users. My final judgement: Not bad.

The only consistent problems have happened to people running VMWare Fusion, software that lets you run Windows on Mac. VMWare's competitor is Parallels, and that has been trouble-free. So if you are using VMWare, wait for them to issue an update before you install Lion 10.7.4.

Those who have not installed Lion at all will find that the version they get from the App Store when they do upgrade will be the most current version with all updates in place. This is an improvement over the old DVD model, where you had to get a disk from the store which was almost always outdated at sale.

The Safari 5.1 problems, specifically the "Webpages not responding" issue is STILL not fixed, as of 5.1.7. Lion users are stuck with it, but Snow Leopard users should stop and stay with version 5.0.5 until this mess is cleaned up. It can be downgraded if you are running 10.6.8 and did get Safari 5.1. You can read about my experience doing it in the April 9 blog posting.

So go ahead, Lion users, get the update. Also be sure to get all Java and Security Updates. Now that we finally have Mac malware to worry about, it's important to keep up.

Last, always Repair Permissions after running Software Update. If you've forgotten how, it's in the November, 2011 Update.