Turn off Mac remote sensor

June 26, 2008 at 8:08 pm · Filed under Tips, Support, Hardware

In addition to Macs in the house, I also have an Apple TV.  When I’m in my living room and using my Apple TV’s remote, my MacBook Pro also responds and fires up Front Row… not exactly what I’m wanting to happen!  In fact, I rarely have a reason to use an Apple Remote to control my MacBook Pro.

The solution I needed: Turning off the MacBook Pro’s remote sensor.  It’s very simple, although the setting was not where I expected to find it.  Here’s how:

Disabling a remote sensor on OS X

1. Open System Preferences
2. Click the “Security” icon
3. Check the option “Disable remote control infrared receiver”

That’s it!

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Get rid of Mail.app SPAM

March 29, 2008 at 1:11 pm · Filed under Mac for PC Users, Tips, Support, Software

A few tips you can try to get a handle on SPAM for your .Mac email account for users of Mail.app (Apple’s default email application).

Be Sure SPAM Filtering is Enabled in Mail

Mail provides some basic SPAM protection.  If it’s off it’s of no use to you, so be sure that it’s enabled.

1. In Mail navigate to Mail > Preferences…
2. Click the Junk Mail option
3. Ensure “Enable junk mail filtering” is checked

With junk mail filtering enabled, there is one more thing you need to do: train Mail. Mail constantly learns from what you flag as SPAM to try to do a better job in the future. Be sure that you flag junk mail as such as opposed to just deleting it.

Get a More Advanced SPAM Protection

The junk mail filtering for Mail on OS X is a nice feature, but it does seem that it takes it awhile to learn a new strain of SPAM when it encounters it. I’ve considered getting more SPAM protection for Mail.app, but just haven’t bitten the bullet yet.

The program which holds the most appeal to me is called SpamSieve by C-Command Software. If there is an opportunity to evaluate SpamSieve prior to purchase I’ll give it a test drive and report back on how effective it is.

Report SPAM you Receive

I’m not sure if it will assist in your short-term battle with SPAM, but being a part of the solution is always a good thing (right?). When you do get SPAM, submit it to a SPAM reporting service such as SpamCop–be sure you go to spamcop.NET not .COM.

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Office 2008 breaks fonts during installation

March 12, 2008 at 9:01 pm · Filed under Tips, Miscellaneous, Support, Software

I just installed the retail version of Office 2008 for Mac and ran in to a problem. After running the installer, I started experiencing font issues. Safari specifically was having issues. I’m not the only one who has experienced this; it’s an issue that reared its head during the Beta testing but apparently didn’t get taken care of completely before Office shipped.

Avoiding font issues when installing Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac

It’s simple: When the Installer recommends that you close ALL applications, take the installer’s advice. If you do so, you should be in the clear.

Correcting font issues after installing Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac

If you didn’t heed the installer warning and you’re reading this post, you likely have some interesting font issues. The problem stems from the installation of fonts which took place as a part of the Office 2008 installation. Here’s how to bring things back to normal:

1. Open the Font Book application
2. Look for fonts which have a circle indicator next to their name. This indicates that there are duplicate versions of the font installed.

   

3. Expand the font and identify the variant (bold, italic, condensed, etc.) of the font that has the issue (or variants).
4. Click on one of the font variants and click Command-I to Show Font Info

   

5. Identify which of the fonts is the original version, and which was later installed (look for the “Duplicate” attribute toward the bottom of the criteria in the right-hand side pane showing the font information. If it says ‘yes’, this is the one you’ll want to remove).
6. To remove the font variant, Control+Click on the font/variant name to remove.
7. Continue to do this until you’ve removed all the newly installed, duplicated fonts.
8. Restart your Mac. Everything should be back to normal.

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Set default program for different file types in OS X

February 21, 2008 at 11:33 pm · Filed under Tips, Support

If you’ve come to the Mac from Windows you’ve probably decided that setting the default program for specific types of files is something on the Mac that doesn’t “just work.”

Instinctively, the first thing most people try is to Control-Click the file, select the “Open With…” option and then click the “Other…” option. You’re presented with what looks like the solution:

One would think selecting the program and then clicking the “Always Open With” checkbox would do the job. But, it doesn’t. OS X is just referring to THIS file—not all files of this type. It’s not completely clear, and pretty frustrating.

Changing the default application for all files of a certain type:

1. Control-Click any file of the type that you wish to set the default application for
2. Select the “Get Info” option
3. If it is closed, expand the “Open with:” section
4. Select the application you wish to open all files of this type
5. Click the “Change All…” button

That’s it. Now all files of the type you modified will open with the application you selected.

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Quickly lock your Mac without putting it to sleep

January 23, 2008 at 3:20 pm · Filed under Mac for PC Users, Tips, Support

When I converted from Windows, I was used to quickly locking my computer buy hitting Ctrl-Alt-Delete and then selecting the ‘lock computer‘ option.  On a Mac, there isn’t a direct equivalent to Ctrl-Alt-Delete, but there’s another method that let’s you lock your desktop quickly without having to put the computer to sleep or log off.

The method involves setting your screen saver to require a password upon waking, and assigning a ‘hot corner’ so initiating the screen saver takes no time at all.  It also assumes that your user account requires a password to log in.

It only takes a minute to set it up.  Here’s what you need to do:

1. Open System Preferences (if it’s not in your Dock, you can go to > System Preferences at the top of the screen)
2. From the System Preferences screen, click the “Desktop & Screen Saver” icon under “Personal” settings.
3. There are two panels, “Desktop” and “Screen Saver“.  If the Screen Saver isn’t the active panel, select it.
4. Click the “Hot Corners…” button at the bottom left-hand corner of the panel.
5. The four select controls represent the four corners of your screen.  Set the top left-hand select control to “Start Screen Saver“.
6. Click the “OK” button.

You can now start the screen saver any time you like by putting the mouse at the top left of the screen and not moving it for two or three seconds.  Now lets make sure your computer will require a password when it wakes from the screen saver:

1. If you closed System Preferences, open it.
2. Click the “Security” icon under “Personal” settings.
3. There are three panels: “General”, “File Vault” and “Firewall.”  With the “General” panel selected ensure the “Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver” checkbox is checked.
4. Close System Preferences.

That’s it! Now, to lock your Mac at any time all you need to do is drag your mouse to the top left-hand corner of the screen.  Your screen saver will automatically start in two or three seconds.  Then, when you later wake the computer it will prompt you (or anyone else!) for a password to unlock it.

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Apple hiring: iPhone Exchange test/sync

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

We can only hope…

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MacBook Pro hard drive upgrade tips

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:

1. I knew that specific drive would work well as I learned about it in a Mac World hard drive upgrade article.
2. 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.
3. 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:

• Mac World: Upgrading the MacBook Pro’s hard drive
• iFixit: Fixit Guide (select your MacBook model, then download and print the guide)

Shopping List

• Hitachi Travelstar 160GB Mobile Hard Drive - OEM
• #0 Phillips Screwdriver, Torx T6 (Many kits do not have the #0 OR the T6—Radio Shack sells an excellent kit with both included)

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!

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How to ensure your MacBook Pro hard drive upgrade is Boot Camp ready

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:

1. Open Disk Utility.
2. Select the drive you wish to erase (format).
3. Format the drive as “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”.
4. Still in Disk Utility and with the drive you just formatted selected, click the “Partition” tab.
5. Divide the disk into two partitions (the size is irrelevant, we’ll be deleting one of the partitions before we’re done).
6. For each partition again specify the “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” format type.
7. For each partition click the “Options…” button and select the “GUID Partition Table” option.
8. Partition the drive.
9. When the partitioning is complete, remove the second partition (select it and click the ‘-’ button)
10. 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.

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How I fixed PHP and MySQL for WordPress after upgrading to Leopard

November 11, 2007 at 2:28 pm · Filed under Tips, Support

Under Tiger I had WordPress installed with PHP 5 (an installation from Entropy.ch) and MySQL 5 (from the MySQL web site). After upgrading to Leopard, my configuration went sour. Here’s the behavior I was seeing:

If I requested http://localhost (or http://127.0.0.1) in Safari I would correctly get the page confirming Apache was configured correctly. However, if I requested any of my previously created web sites in my Sites directory (or even my default page http://localhost/~smcandrew), I would get a Forbidden message. It sounded like a permissions error, but that wasn’t what turned out to be the problem. It turned out to be a handful of easy to fix configuration settings.

Here’s what I did to get everything back on track.

Enabling Leopard’s PHP 5 environment

PHP 5 installs with Leopard. The problem: it’s disabled by default.

1. Note that Apache’s .conf file has been moved to a new location (it used to be at /private/etc/httpd/httpd.conf and is now located at /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf).
2. Open the httpd.conf file located at /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf with your text editor of choice and find the following line:

   # LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

   Uncomment the line, changing it to:

   LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

3. If you use virtual hosting, find the following line:

   # Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

   Uncomment the line, changing it to:

   Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

4. Save the file

As a side note, if you are using virtual hosts, you may need to go set them up as you had before in your virtual hosts file (/private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf). The Upgrade of Leopard did not modify my virtual hosts, but if you find yourself having issues this is where you should look next.

Relocate your .conf file

In Apache 2.2 the .conf file for your user is stored in a new location. It’s easy enough to move it.

1. The old location of your .conf file is /etc/httpd/users/[yourUserName].conf
2. The location it needs to be in for Apache 2.2 is /etc/apache2/users/[yourUserName].conf
3. To move the file:
   Open Terminal and type the following command inserting your user name where I have ’smcandrew’ (my user name):

   cp /etc/httpd/users/smcandrew.conf /etc/apache2/users/smcandrew.conf

Be sure your .conf file has what it needs for WordPress

My .conf file got lost in the shuffle when I upgraded. I’m not sure if this was due to my plodding around or if it was a victim of the Leopard upgrade. I had saved an older version of my .conf file and used the same settings it had in the new .conf file and everything was fine. To check your .conf file:

1. With your favorite text editor, open your .conf file from the following directory (as mentioned above, yours will be called [yourUserName].conf):
   /etc/apache2/users/
2. I had a stock .conf file (I’m assuming it was created during the upgrade). So, I changed the text in the .conf file to read:

   <directory>
   
   Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
   
   AllowOverride All
   
   Order allow,deny
   
   Allow from all
   
   </directory>

   Again, exchange ’smcandrew’ for your user name

3. Save the file

Where’s my MySQL socket?

During the Leopard upgrade it looks as though Tiger’s MySQL setup wasn’t mucked with at all. But, the location of the MySQL socket isn’t where it was in Tiger. So, I had to modify my php.ini file.

1. Open up any text editor you like and open:
   /private/etc/php.ini
2. Find the line that reads:

   mysql.default_socket =

   and change it to:

   mysql.default_socket = /private/tmp/mysql.sock

3. Find the line that reads:

   mysqli.default_socket =

   and change it to:

   mysqli.default_socket = /private/tmp/mysql.sock

4. Save the php.ini file

Note: if you have no php.ini file in the aforementioned directory, you should have a ‘php.ini.default’ file. Make a copy of this file, naming it php.ini, then execute the steps above.

Restart Apache and PHP and get started!

If your upgrade woes were the same as mine, everything should be back on track now. You can restart Apache, which will enable your new PHP settings. If you like Terminal, you likely already know the command (sudo apachectl restart). If you prefer not to use Terminal, you can open System Preferences > Sharing and uncheck the check beside “Web Sharing.” Then, check it again to restart.

That’s it. Things should be back up and running. Hope this helps!

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Leopard Dock and Menu Bar user interface options

November 4, 2007 at 2:54 pm · Filed under Tips, Support, Software

I installed Apple’s latest version of OS X, version 10.5 or “Leopard” last week. I’ll sideline the oh-so-popular debate about questionable UI changes in Leopard, and instead post quick ‘fixes’ I found regarding two things I wasn’t a fan of:

Change OS X Dock for Leopard

Not a fan of the new 3d dock? Try a 2d dock that is available but unfortunately not exposed as an option. Here’s all you need to do:

1. Open the Terminal application located in your Applications > Utilities folder
2. Type:
   defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES
   killall Dock

The first line requests that a 2d rendition of the Dock be used. The second line terminates and then restarts all instances of the Dock.

Change Leopard’s Translucent Menu Bar

The Apple hacking community has yet to find a quick Terminal command to revert to an opaque Menu Bar. What can be done is a quick modification to your Desktop Wallpaper which will achieve the same effect. Some have scoffed at this method. My take? It’s clever and easy: thumbs up.

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