Archive for December, 2007
December 31, 2007 at 2:19 pm · Filed under Tips
The Leopard dock has a great undocumented feature which allows quick access to:
- Recent applications
- Recent documents
- Recent servers
- Favorite volumes
- Favorite items
Here’s how to enable the feature:
- Open Terminal
- Enable the Dock item by typing:
defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{ "tile-data" = { "list-type" = 1; }; "tile-type" = "recents-tile"; }'
- Stop and restart the Dock to see the change by typing (still in Terminal):
killall Dock
The new item appears on the right-hand side of the dock and defaults to displaying Recent Applications. To change what is displayed right-click the icon.
Tags:Dock, OS X, Tips, Undocumented Feature, User InterfaceShare This
December 31, 2007 at 1:18 pm · Filed under Mac for PC Users, Tips
Creating a screen capture of part or all of the screen with OS X is pretty straightforward once you know what keys to press. Here’s a quick rundown:
OS X screen capture keystrokes
- Command-Shift-3: takes a screen capture of the entire screen
- Command-Shift-4: allows you to select the area of the screen to capture
- Command-Shift-4 [release] Space : allows you to take a screen capture of an application window
Each of the above commands creates a screen capture of the desired area and places it on your desktop. If you prefer to take a screen capture which you can paste into a document, email, chat (etc.), just hold down the Control key in addition to the keystrokes above. The screen capture will be put onto the clipboard instead of saved in a file to your desktop.
Changing OS X screen capture file type
The default file type for screen captures is PNG. If you prefer a different format, it can easily be changed:
- Open a Terminal window
- Type the following line:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg
The above Terminal command will change the screen capture file format to JPEG format the next time you log in. Available screen capture file format options include:
Tags:Mac for PC Users, OS X, Screen Capture, Tips, Undocumented FeatureShare This
December 27, 2007 at 12:20 pm · Filed under Hardware
Popular Mechanics’ ranking of “The Top 10 Worst Gadgets of 2007” puts Microsoft’s Zune at #8 while Apple’s Apple TV finishes second only to the Palm Foleo. What did it take to make the list?
Rather than going for the most obscure or ludicrous gadgets, we based our choices on missed opportunities, hype gone awry and some mysterious fumbles. And while we tried to bash constructively the gizmos we’ve tested so extensively in the lab, sometimes the most useful response is, in fact, a complete rejection.
Popular Mechanics cites Apple TV’s failure to rise to the challenge being posed by its rivals (specifically DVRs and video-on-demand), noting that the only way Apple TV could have moved into the living room in force would have been by way of a all-you-can-eat subscription model.
What’s your take on Apple TV’s shortcomings?
Take our Apple TV feature poll!
The Top 10 Worst Gadgets of All Time (Popular Mechanics)
- Palm Foleo
- Apple TV
- LG Chocolate VX8550
- Ugobe Pleo
- Black & Decker SPT100 Specialty Performance Hand Tool
- Violet Nabaztag
- Husky 5-in-1 Drywall Tool
- Microsoft Zune
- 3001 AD Trimersion HMD
- Ironman Resolution Vibration Trainer
Tags:AppleTV, DVR, Foleo, Hardware, iTunes, Microsoft, Movie Rental, Palm, ZuneShare This
December 26, 2007 at 10:50 pm · Filed under Games, Software, Hardware
Yes. You can play (some) PlayStation 1 games on your iPhone. If:
- You feel cleverness trumps quality of gameplay (the hack may be elegant, but the gameplay doesn’t appear to be)
- Your iPhone has been jailbroken (prematurely “opened” to allow installation of third-party applications)
- Legality isn’t of much concern (this should require no explanation)
Still reading? An iPhone application called pxs4iphone brings PlayStation 1 gaming to the iPhone if you’re fine with the caveats above. YouTube videos and postings on the developer’s forum do demonstrate the application being installed and games running. The reality: the majority of games that will run don’t replicate the PlayStation experience—they are running notably slower than the native PS1 games. Even with emulator tweaks (frame skipping, etc.) and iPhone overclocking this early release of psx4iphone trails behind PlayStation performance.
Will psx4iphone improve? Undoubtedly. Even without major rewrites of psx4iphone, hardware improvements alone would eventually make it plausible. For the mainstream, however, the future of gaming on the iPhone and iPod Touch will take a different form (in fact, require it).
Links:
Tags:Games, Hardware, iPhone, iPhone SDK, iPod Touch, jailbroken, legal, psx4iphone, SoftwareShare This
December 26, 2007 at 10:24 am · Filed under Poll, Hardware
Looking across Apple’s entire hardware line, Apple TV sticks out as the product Apple devoted little attention to in 2007.
Rumor sites, insiders, and analysts are all predicting major changes for Apple TV in 2008. There are several directions Apple could pursue with Apple TV from a stronger focus on high definition video downloads to an integrated HD-DVD or Blu-ray drive or even PVR functionality.
Pretend you have Steve Jobs’ ear, and ask yourself:
Loading …
If you have any comments about Apple TV please comment below.
Tags:AppleTV, Blu ray, DVD, Hardware, HD, HD DVD, Movie Rental, Optical Drive, Poll, PVR, RumorsShare This
December 21, 2007 at 3:39 pm · Filed under Rumors, Software, Hardware
Popular Apple/Macintosh rumor site Think Secret will cease to be published as a part of the terms of an undisclosed settlement with Apple, Inc.
Apple sued Think Secret in 2005 citing leaked software and hardware information published on Think Secret. While no formal mention of money changing hands has been made, it has been widely speculated that Think Secret was compensated financially as a part of the agreement.
The following press release was posted to the ThinkSecret web site:
Apple, Think Secret settle lawsuit
December 20, 2007 - PRESS RELEASE: Apple and Think Secret have settled their lawsuit, reaching an agreement that results in a positive solution for both sides. As part of the confidential settlement, no sources were revealed and Think Secret will no longer be published. Nick Ciarelli, Think Secret’s publisher, said “I’m pleased to have reached this amicable settlement, and will now be able to move forward with my college studies and broader journalistic pursuits.”
As a part of the settlement no sources of Think Secret’s content were named.
Tags:Hardware, Lawsuit, Rumors, SoftwareShare This
December 13, 2007 at 10:47 am · Filed under Rumors, Support, Software, Hardware
Apple may be looking to close the iPhone/Exchange/ActiveSync loop itself depending upon how you read into this recent Cupertino job posting (emphasis mine):
Job Description
| Requisition Number |
3161520 |
| Job title |
iPhone Windows Outlook/Exchange QA Eng |
| Location |
Santa Clara Valley |
| Country |
United States |
| City |
Cupertino |
| State/Province |
California |
| Job type |
Full Time |
| Job description |
The iPhone Quality team is looking for a motivated, highly-technical Exchange test/sync engineer with excellent problem solving and communication skills. You will join a dynamic team responsible for qualifying the latest iPhone products. Your focus will be testing Exchange and Outlook functionality with Apple’s innovative new phone. The successful candidate will complete both documented and adhoc testing to ensure high quality releases.Required Experience:
* BS in Computer Science or equivalent experience
* Firm knowledge of Exchange 2003/2007 including configuration and troubleshooting
* Ability to investigate and debug difficult problems on Windows
* Creative thinker and problem solver
* A passion for user-focused design & high quality technology
* Comfortable and adaptable in a fast-paced and informal environment
* Thorough knowledge of the Windows operating systemsPreferred Experience:
* Thorough knowledge of Mac OS X operating systems
* Experience with Mail, Calendaring, networking engineering, or QA
* Experience with automation, scripting, PHP, SQL, or Perl
* Strong commitment to technical quality assurance as a key part of the development cycle |
We can only hope…
Tags:Hardware, iPhone, iPhone ActiveSync, iPhone Development, Microsoft, Microsoft Exchange, Rumors, Software, SupportShare This
December 2, 2007 at 9:08 pm · Filed under Tips, Support, Hardware
After upgrading my Mac Book Pro hard drive last week, I’ve got a few tips if you’re heading down that road yourself.
The job: Upgrading my internal 80 GB hard drive to a 120 GB or larger drive.
What I ended up selecting for the replacement drive was a Hitachi Travelstar (5K160) 160GB Mobile Hard Drive
. I chose this as my upgrade drive for a few reasons:
- I knew that specific drive would work well as I learned about it in a Mac World hard drive upgrade article.
- The drive has received very good or excellent reviews as a MacBook Pro upgrade drive. It gets good marks for how quiet it is (my unit is no louder than the one it replaced), it is a bit faster than the stock 80 GB unit, and battery life doesn’t suffer, but improves.
- The price of the drive is hard to beat.
Here’s my notes and recommendations, I hope they help you make a quick, painless upgrade to your MacBook Pro:
Leverage these two guides as a starting point for your hard drive upgrade:
Shopping List
Additions/modifications to the Mac World and iFixit Guide:
- If you are going to use Boot Camp (ever), read my last post about how to erase (format) the hard drive to ensure it is Boot Camp ready.
- When you disassemble your MacBook Pro, use some duct or masking tape to ensure you don’t lose screws. It may sound silly, but when that first screw goes tic-tac-tic across your tile floor and you waste 20 minutes trying to find it you’ll thank me. Actualy printing out the iFixit Guide and taping the screws to it isn’t a bad way to go.
- After removing the hard drive from the Mac chassis, you also need to remove four additional screws which have rubber ‘washers’ and transfer them over to your replacement drive. Removing the screws from my factory drive was easy. When you place them onto your new drive just be sure not to over-tighten them. I’m not sure exactly what those ‘washers’ are called. Take a look at the photos below to see exactly what I’m referring too.
- For backing up my drive, I used Carbon Copy Cloner (Mac World’s article suggests Super Duper) and had no problems whatsoever. Carbon Copy Cloner is a well thought out donation-ware (uncrippled shareware) title.
The “do not cover” hole on the Hitachi Travelstar
After seating the new drive in the chassis, I started putting the cabling back in place and ran into a problem. The Travelstar 160 GB had a clear message on it to not cover a hole on its housing. That hole is a “breather hole” and meant to be left open. After trying several different ways, I could not find a way to re-route Apple’s cabling. There are two DIY solutions. One, cover the hole. I covered mine and I’ve been watching the drive temperature and it has been fine. The second, with some thin foam or plastic build a riser so the drive can breathe.
I hope your upgrade is quick and easy!
Tags:Boot Camp Assistant, GUID Partition Table, Hard Drive, Hardware, Hitachi 160 GB Travelstar, How To, iFixIt, Journaled, MacBook Pro, Support, Tips, UpgradeShare This
December 1, 2007 at 7:22 pm · Filed under Tips, Support, Hardware
I recently upgraded my MacBook Pro’s 80 GB hard drive to a 160 GB Hitachi Travelstar. I leaned on an upgrade article I found on Mac World and everything went smooth. In fact, it was completely painless until I tried to use Tiger’s Boot Camp Assistant at which time my Mac told me that the hard drive could not be partitioned and I would need to reformat it.
The exact error message Boot Camp Assistant reported to me was:
“The Startup Disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition.
The startup disk must be formatted as a single MAC OS Extended (Journaled) volume or already partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for installing Windows”
In accordance with the instructions from Mac World, I DID partition the drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). After repeating the entire process of erasing the new drive and migrating my backed-up OS onto the new drive and failing, I was just about at the point of starting over with my Tiger installation disks. Luckily, I found a solution.
Apple’s Support and forums offered no solutions. After digging around on the Internet and finding many similar problems but no answers, I stumbled upon an article that noted that to get Windows up and running under Boot Camp the drive had to be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with a GUID partition scheme.
Now I was even more confused, because when formatting the new drive with Disk Utility there is no GUID partition scheme option. The GUID partition scheme does exist, however. There just isn’t a logical way to format the disk with it using Disk Utility.
Formatting a hard drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with a GUID partition scheme:
- Open Disk Utility.
- Select the drive you wish to erase (format).
- Format the drive as “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”.
- Still in Disk Utility and with the drive you just formatted selected, click the “Partition” tab.
- Divide the disk into two partitions (the size is irrelevant, we’ll be deleting one of the partitions before we’re done).
- For each partition again specify the “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” format type.
- For each partition click the “Options…” button and select the “GUID Partition Table” option.
- Partition the drive.
- When the partitioning is complete, remove the second partition (select it and click the ‘-’ button)
- Apply the change.
The result: a single partition hard drive which is formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with a GUID Partition Table. Now you can open Boot Camp Assistant, partition the drive, and install Windows.
Tags:Boot Camp Assistant, Disk Utility, Error Message, GUID Partition Table, Hardware, Hitachi 160 GB Travelstar, iFixIt, Journaled, Mac OS Extended, Support, Tiger, Tips, WindowsShare This
