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JimmyC
Screen preference in the Mac OS X:
To change your screen resolution. Launch the System Preferences application or choose System Preferences from the apple menu in the upper left hand corner.
Then choose Displays:
Best way is to detect displays - it should give you the optimal resolution for your monitor. This is also useful if you have two monitors connected. You can pick any resolution that works for you and your eyes. You may also want to use the displays manual controls to change the width and hight.
VMWare Fusion On Mac Delivers My Best Windows Experience Ever - The Apple BlogBanter on the use of Win XP under VMWare - still have to buy Windows XP and I am looking to hear details on that purchase vs. Vista.
I have to consider virus protection and whether we really need a virtual machine. The good news is I rarely go to my PC for stuff anymore. The biggest issue I have is really with Safari, Why won’t Apple make this thing work with all websites. Like Wordpress for example!! That’s another topic to rant on.
I will probably buy Maia a MacBook after MacWorld January 18.
They usually come out with new products then and drop prices. I’ll
probably also replace our family PC (for Daniel and Sophia) with a
mac-mini running both OS X and either Win XP or Vista - the Mini isn’t
much but I can replace the PC CPU and still use the monitor, mouse and
keyboard from the old PC. While BootCamp (free with mac) lets you boot
in Windows (purchased copy), Parallels or VMWare Fusion lets you run
both at the same time.
One thing to consider is how you are introducing the MS Windows safety problems for Internet and networking when you install these. Take the new release of Parallels Pro 3.0 - they bundle software to help with this. By the way - not so great reviews of Parallels - seems like the readers at AppleInsider prefer VMWare. They also point out that it is better to “sandbox” your Windows VM to protect the computer. Kinda makes me want to simply use Boot Camp on and only run Windows without any network connections.
10.5 OS X Leopard file moving bug:
I got my latest copy of Macworld today - if you want a great overview
of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) its a good set of articles. Apple OS X is
10.0 - each point release is code named. There won’t be a 10.6 until
they come up with a new big-cat. In the mean time they did release a
10.5.1
It fixed the file transfer issue. It had something to do with
specifically “moving” not copying the directory or files. This isn’t
something I do often - I usually copy and then delete in two steps, so
it never happened to me. In fact, I didn’t know you could do it in
one step, apparently if you hold down the “command” button while
dragging and dropping it moves instead of copies. Basically -
Leopard’s Finder had a glaring bug in its directory-moving code,
leading to horrendous data loss if a destination volume disappears
while a move operation is in action. It was wrong right down to the
underlying UNIX code the OS is built on.
More details at places like AppleInsider and MacNN forums.
AppleInsider had an article on Nov 6:
“It appears that Leopard’s Finder (as well as Finder versions dating
back to Mac OS X 10.3 Panther) fails to check the integrity of the
directory copied to the destination drive before deleting the source
directory from the source drive. Therefor, if a directory move is
interrupted partially through the move process, the Finder assumes the
move was successful and deletes the original directory from the source
drive, leaving a directory with only partial file contents on the
destination drive.”
Yuck!
It was fixed, however,
Mac360 - Put DVD Movies On Your Mac. Use Your Handbrake.Mac 360’s review of Handbrake outlines an application that my family and friends have asked for to allow them to get their DVD’s on their iPod’s. I’m not a fan of those people who do this with DVD’s from BlockBuster but if you buy the DVD I think you should be able to play it anywhere. As I have ripped all of my CD’s to my iPod, I would expect to be able to do the same with the DVD’s. I even wish I could do this with the ones pulled from DISH on PPV.For now, take a look at this review of Handbrake. Also, MacTheRipper - another Mac Appl. for doing this.
The latest version of Handbrake comes with a bunch of presets for the Mac. That’s handy if you plan to use your iPod. This is good for both backing up DVD’s and playing them on things like the Apple TV and iPod… Simply put, Handbrake will make a copy of nearly any copy protected DVD, encrypted or unencrypted with CSS, PAL or NTSC, AC-3, LPCM, or MPEG audio. If you don’t know what all that means, don’t worry. Handbrake makes it easy. … When it copies a DVD movie for AppleTV and iTunes you’ll end up with MPEG-4 or H.264, with a few other options available. The long and short is– Handbrake copies DVDs so you can back them up or play them via iTunes for AppleTV– or iPod, or Sony Playstation 3.
Here you go - a video on the web. Complements of You Tube and iMovie. Created on my new Macpro, with an iSight camera. It is my first Videoblog installment. A review of the new imovie 08 part of iLife. It really is I = movie now. Rather its iVideo. The new iMovie loses stuff so you will need Adobe Premier or Apple Final Cut Express to do real video editing but it adds consumer workflow that lets you create movies and share them anywhere easily.You can use it like a word-processor for videos. I will probably use my copy of Final Cut Express or better yet - they let you keep iMovie 06 so I’ll use that to edit videos and this to publish. This really is a great publishing tool.
I ran the Mac Pro SMC Firmware Update 1.1 on my Mac Pro today. Wow - on restart is turned the fans on super high - I really thought the damn thing was going to catch on fire.
New update to iLife and iWork out this week as well. Security update 2007-007 for Intel.
October Mac OS-X update give new Parental Controls - can’t wait.
Update - did a web search - MacFixIt website shows that this was an update to the way Mac OS X uses the fans to cool the CPU. Apparently it will rev the fans every time it startup up or even wakes up.
Marc Fearby’s Home Page » Blog Archive » My kingdom for a perfect operating system
I cannot argue with his post in most respects - esp Windows XP, Vista, etc. And sure Mac OS X isn’t perfect. Also - what I assume he means by finder’s lack of a address bar is the “path” in mac speak - if you “right click” or ctrl-click on the top you can customize finder windows to show things like delete and “path” buttons - there you can see where you are. It does require a mouse move and click though.
I have to give it to him on the “folder” merge thing and quite frankly the “where am I” issue. My daughter once completely lost her entire documents folder when she copied the one in the root hard drive over her personal documents folder. It asked her but she didn’t realize what she was doing. It broke her heart - years of homework gone. Not that she needed it and heck she was only 10 but she loves her homework (God bless her). XP’s approach is a little more safe, and Apple is arrogant about stupidity - which can be frustrating.
So, I have to agree with a few of his points but even the well thought out reasons outlined in “Top 10 Reasons Apple Dock…” referenced don’t mention why it is a great tool as well. Its easy to look for bad…as I tell my kids, look for good and you are always going to find happiness. Then again, you may also never improve the world. I won’t be at the WWDC so I won’t see Leopard until this fall. The fact is, Windows tried to do everything in that start menu. They even put it on the Windows CE (whatever the hand held OS is) screen. Dinky little screen with a menu shooting up and over to find what you want - when Palm put the most important things right there in front of you. That to me is what the Doc is all about. They add a little to other areas where it makes sense too. Widgets, Expose, and the new Spaces is unique, Spotlight continues to get better, perhaps they will add these features into Finder; or find an alternative. Will that be good enough? If you try to do too much in the doc you will re-create all these other tools and it will become a fat pig. And improving Finder with an address bar to let you know where you are might help - its the way spotlight works now - when you hover over a found item it give it to you.
I’ll point you Mac users to this fantastic page - Dan Rodney’s Mac OS X quick reference guide. It helps you navigate and work OS X.
MyPublisher | Design your own Photo Book to be printed as a beautiful hardcover book!
I have used this service and commented here in the past. They gave me the chance to Beta Test the new software for Mac. I have used the iPhoto Plug-in before. This is a stand-alone program that allows you to create a book, using photos from any source including iPhoto.
Thanks for letting me participate in the beta of the Mac OS X Beta program. I did the survey but not sure if all comments will make it though. I’ll do a full review after the final release.
When adding pictures from an iPhoto Album it would be better if you could drag and drop the album and have it add the photos in that album in order. Or if when you select all photos in an album it drops them in the same order. You can much easier order pictures in iPhoto then on the add photo bar.
The only way to add them in a specific order is to drag them one by one.
I like the big picture view that lets you organize the photos. I like the unassigned feature too. But you can only multi-select and select many by stretching the mouse over. A shift-select would be good. In other words click one then shift click one further down the line selecting all in the middle.
When working in the page layout I like the double click to get to the image controls. That gives comfort and control over pictures as you work on layout.
There seems to be a bug in the image control window. I forgot to click done after editing a picture and then going to add another picture to that page. I went up dragged the new picture down and it worked but didn’t close the image control menu. Then I clicked done on the image control menu and it wouldn’t go away. I saved the book. Then I went to the next page, okay, but when I went to drag a picture down to the page the application crashed. I had to restart and good news the book opened to that page again.
The zoom in on text is cool, would be good to incorporate the spelling check feature of Mac OSX.
It would be nice to move composed pages around. In other words, when you go to the pages film strip view up top, you cannot drag and drop pages back and forth. You have to unload and reload pictures. Or am I missing something.
For example, the All pages view is nice to move pictures around the entire book, it would be good to be able to move pages too.
I moved a picture to a page that had a black background and the text didn’t change to white - so it didn’t show up.
When adding and deleting pictures from pages, moving them around there seemed to be some random placement of pictures at the top film strip. I lost track. But when I went from pages film strip to photos film strip (or whatever its called at the top) the pages were okay.
I changed the layout background from white to black and it ended up replacing a picture on the page. I also noticed that at these glitch/random events it leaves the picture up top. Actually it grabbed a picture from the next page, because when I tried to replace it back it replaced one on the next page. Maybe its trying to autofill but its acting strange. Now its locked in a picture and when I try and delete or correct it sticks, won’t let me delete. I’m quitting and restarting. Didn’t help.
I went back and did some reworking, not sure if pictures disappeared or not. I then ran into the same image control bug - window stuck. So I saved and quit and restarted.
You cannot seem to go back and get photos - well you can but when you do, any unused photos in the filmstrip disappear. I did go back to get more and when I went to the pages view it only had the 4 I added. Well I went to the organize page and it had put all the unused pictures on page 15, not sure what that means. There isn’t a page 15 yet.
I deleted all the empty pages and they went back to unassigned.
Login and upload went fine. More options here then with iPhoto plug-in. That is a bonus.
In the end, I think it is easier to use iPhoto’s book maker, except for these publishing options.
I need to try this:
http://howto.diveintomark.org/ipod-dvd-ripping-guide/
I figure - if you legitimately purchase the movie there is no reason you shouldn’t be able to play it on your iPod. Its just like CD’s. Those that know me know I’m a bit of an irritant about sharing music. I do this this is fair. Just like I think one or two time use of burning the new iPod movies for sale on iTunes to a DVD would be fair.
Here’s an idea - invent something new that solves a problem! OK, duhhh. But think about it - then do it for a problem that is because a really big company doesn’t want to deal with it. Microsoft Windows Media Player for Mac OS X is a dead product. If you want to run WMV files in Quicktime you need the plug-in from Flip4Mac. Its simple really - and now it is free. I wonder if Microsoft put some big $$ into the company. The payoff is of course the Visio model - they built a better workflow diagramming solution for Windows and eventually Microsoft bought them. Great exit strategy. Not sure if that will happen here - but it did work for the company that made Virtual PC for Mac (running Windows on Mac).
UPDATE: As you can see in the comment below; they didn’t put money into the company - at least to help develop the product; who knows from here on out.
I just downloaded and immediately upgraded to the version that lets me export files from Quicktime to WMV. You can even get it from Microsoft now! Now I can put videos out here for my friends who won’t or cannot upgrade to the latest Quicktime for Windows. I think the latest MPEG format is a better quality video but who am I to judge.
Jim
