Category: mac

Swap slideshows

A friend on my bowling team made a PowerPoint presentation on his PC at work that he wants to show us all. If he emails it to me, will I be able to see it?

Totally! (1) I’m pretty certain you have Microsoft Office for Mac, which means you have PowerPoint, which will open the heck out of that doc.

(2) Now, check this out: Have your friend email you the file. From right in your email, click once on the attachment’s icon, then click the “Quick Look” button — or just hit the space bar. Isn’t that cool? Now, you may not see transitions, and maybe not embedded video, but almost all of the content should be visible.

(Sidenote: Just today, a friend of mine was trying to see previews of some design files, .eps and the like, that Quick Look wouldn’t render. She found a $15 Quick Look plug-in called SneakPeek Pro that fixed that, which made me look up a whole list of Quick Look plug-ins, many of them free. These can really extend your Mac to showing you fast previews of all kinds of stuff. But I digress…)

(3) But wait, there’s more! If you want to make presentations look just a whole lot better than you can in PowerPoint, you should look at the new iWork — it’s just so good. Apple’s Keynote software makes really fine presentations really efficiently. While you’re at it, have you picked up the new iLife, with iPhoto Face Recognition?

(4) I just recently found out about SlideShare, a service on which to store and show your presentations. As far as I can tell, it’s free.

(5) Finally, you could export the preso as a movie:

Save a presentation as a PowerPoint Movie [link]

  1. On the File menu, click Make Movie.
  2. To adjust PowerPoint Movie options, click Adjust Settings on the dialog box that drops down, and then click Next.
  3. Choose the options you want, and then click OK.
  4. In the Save As box, type a name for your movie. If your movie will be viewed by users of Windows-based computers, select Append File Extension.
  5. Click Save.

Once you do, you can put it on an iPod or iPhone, and watch it on that smaller screen, or…

If he wanted to show it on our big-screen TV, how do we do that?

Ahhhhhh, now that’s an interesting one. The most direct way is to run a monitor cable from your computer to your TV. (Your iMac may not feel as convenient as a laptop to accomplish that, but it wouldn’t be that unwieldy.) Any Mac or Windows computer will know that it has a new display, and will show whatever you put up.

A couple of other options would be:

Connecting your iPod or iPhone to a video dock, such as this or this. Here is some help from Apple on getting video off of your iPod or iPhone.

I have one client who converts his presentations into image files that he can display as a slideshow on his Apple TV, which is an appliance that fits in with your other home stereo components, and let’s you easily play music, movies, and photos that you acquire through iTunes or by other means.


Email not receiving

My Inbox in Apple Mail has a triangle icon with an exclamation point in it, and isn’t receiving emails. I’m having to use my “All Mail” folder below. How do I fix this?

I get this question from time to time. It happens for different reasons, often when either your internet or your email service is interrupted — which has afflicted Gmail recently. Usually the easy fix is, in Apple Mail, clicking on Mailbox > Take All Accounts Online. I’m actually a little surprised that “All Mail” worked; kudos on finding that!

The triangle went away all on its own!! 🙂

It does that. Now, what would be great is if they made a big freakin’ sign that said, “If you see a freakin’ triangle over here, this is what you should do…”

Sheesh.


Create a wireless network without a wireless router

We have several Mac minis, all connected to our network with Ethernet. We just got a laptop, but we don’t have a wireless router. Can one of the minis create a wireless network?

Yes, that’s super-easy. In Tiger: On one of the minis, go to System Preferences > Sharing > Internet. In Leopard: System Preferences > Sharing, and turn on “Internet Sharing” in the list of services. In there you can share the Ethernet connection via Airport, which tells the mini to create what’s called an “ad-hoc” wireless network. You can name it what you want and password-protect it, too.

What email service should I use?

I have an earthlink.net email address, which comes with webmail and 10MB storage. But I’m thinking about changing my internet service provider? And sometimes I run out of storage at earthlink. I just don’t know if it’s worth it to me to convert to a new email address.

May I suggest Google Apps to host your email? It’s free, has a frigton of storage (7.5GB), and has all the bounteous benefit of the Gmail interface, or you can access it from Apple Mail or your email client of choice. There are few comparable alternatives out right now, and none of those are free.

This is important: You can KEEP your current email addresses. In the case of your earthlink.net address, we just start forwarding it to Gmail — either a general @gmail.com address or to your @yourdomain.com. Your correspondents may never have to know that you changed addresses. And for you@ (or whatevertheheckyouwant@) yourdomain.com, Google simply becomes your email host.

You can pay Earthlink a few bucks month to keep the address, but that’s a sucky long-term idea.

Also, the Gmail interface is importantly fantastic. I sometimes switch over to it just to get certain things like automatic organization accomplished. And lemme tell ya, the spam filtering is outta sight. I don’t see spam anymore. One message a month or less, and I can always look in the spam folder in Apple Mail just to double-check I haven’t missed a real message.

One last thing: There was once the perception that a @yahoo.com (or the like) implies an inconstant personality. I can say definitively that, especially since Gmail, that is no longer the case. The service is recognized net-wide as legitimate and unique. I practically insist on my clients using Gmail, unless they are already on Yahoo. If they have any address other than Yahoo, including using their own domain, 7 out of 10 times we get them over to Gmail quick as we can, and they never look back.


Got the new MacBook

13″. Back-lit keyboard. Now with 4GB RAM. 0.1 lbs. lighter than my 12″ PowerBook.
Oh, it’s so good. I’m more impressed than I have been with any previous model, at the time. Although, now I’m thinking back [cue bubbly dream-sequence transition]…

  1. 5300cs – 750Mb HD, 256MB RAM – The passive-matrix 256-color screen made it adequate but not special. Certainly a workhorse, but a pre-Jobs/Ive design.
  2. PowerBook G3 “Pismo” with FireWire – 500MHz, 512MB RAM (I think), 6GB HD – Stellar, with heft that was attractive at the time. DVD drive was so nifty. Airport card. I had the Zip drive that I could swap with the optical drive, which was a nice trick.
  3. Titanium PowerBook – 800MHz, 1GB RAM, 60GB HD – Ahhh, 10 times more storage, a G4 processor and a huge, bright screen. And so well built. The metal-encrusted TiBook was a major move forward in laptop design.
  4. 12″ PowerBook – 1.33GHz, 1.25GB RAM, 80GB HD – The fetish Mac. Wished I coulda gone to 2GB. Wished for back-lit keyboard. Wished for brighter screen. Wished for sudden motion sensor. Wished for bigger hard drive. Was able to hack the two-finger scroll. But for all of that, the 12″ is a fantastic unit.
  5. 15″ MacBook Pro – 2.2GHz, 4GB RAM, 160GB HD – Had to buy it. The 12″ had run its course and wouldn’t run Leopard well. Needed Intel. A rocketship with a bright, beautiful (and matte) display, although I hate to say I’m biased against it because a) it’s heavy and b) its logic board was screwed up from day 1. Having received the 13″, I can finally turn the MBP into AppleCare for the second time. I’m looking forward to getting it back for designing, viewing, and gaming. Also worth noting here that this was the last rev of Apple’s original aluminum laptop design, which had stayed incredibly consistent from January 2003 to October 2008, when the glass-trackpad-and-screen MacBooks were introduced. That’s a long, successful run for a design in this industry.
  6. 13″ MacBook – 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, 250GB HD – Hewn from a single piece of aluminum, which is hot. LED screen that I can actually make too bright for indoors. User-accessible hard drive (want 7200RPM, but I love this 250GB!), which compensates somewhat for lack of FireWire. One single glass multi-touch trackpad, which my (slight) paunch seems to brush against and prevent good cursor tracking. And two option keys, which means no more key-remapping hacks. I’m officially a fan.

The only non-laptop Mac I’ve ever bought is my Intel Core Duo Mac mini, currently functioning as my media server (with a Drobo) and OS X Server break-and-fix learning box.

San Antonio realtors can switch to Mac

I meant to put this out sooner:
The San Antonio Board of Realtors contracted an MLS developer to allow agents and other members to use Firefox and mobile browsers, such as that of the iPhone, to browse real estate listings. This is a huge deal for this market, and potentially for our business.

Things I download on everyone’s Mac

These are direct as I can make ’em. Click on the links, and in most cases, the software will start downloading.
  1. Firefox 7
  2. Google Earth and Google Chrome
  3. Flip4Mac and Silverlight (To play Windows Media files — this is just the latest version, but I’ll try to keep it updated. The company’s download site is here.)
  4. Perian (To play everything else. Same note as for Flip4Mac; download site here.)
  5. OpenOffice (direct link to download) – I want to encourage everyone to start thinking about editing docs online, but if you need an Office suite, this is as good as Microsoft’s.
  6. SMARTreporter – get notified if one of your hard drives is going to fail. Of course, even if it does, you’re fine, because you’re backing up every day, right? (Note: I don’t always do this one any longer.)
I also have a list of my favorite OS X tweaks here.

My iPhone 2.0 Saga, Part III: Good news/bad news

I started getting this really annoying error in iTunes, when trying to check for updates in the App Store:

“We could not complete your iTunes Store request.
An unknown error occurred (5002).

There was an error in the iTunes Store. Please try again later.”

I had resolved this once in the past by deleting and redownloading apps, but that didn’t work this time. So, since the 2.1 update seemed to go so well with just a straight “Update”, I thought I’d see if the iPhone backup process really was fixed. I didn’t mention in Parts I or II that the 2.0 backup-and-restore system, besides taking an obnoxiously long time, also failed to restore all the preferences to the phone, thus requiring at least a partial reconfiguration of my device.

After ensuring that my backups were turned on, and that the MobileSync folder had a recent backup (only 7.9MB!), your intrepid correspondent hit the Restore button in iTunes. And…

…It worked! The restore process itself was pretty quick, though It took a while to reïnstall all the apps and the music and the photos and the podcasts, but that’s due to my own particular digital gluttony. All my app preferences and other configs and address book and SMS messages and everything came back. All I had to do was reörganize the apps on the Springboard (they installed alphabetically, which is understandable, though I still want Apple to make that easy).

But…

The stupid iTunes error remains. Last time, I tried changing my iTS password and reëntering my credit card info, according to suggestions in the Apple discussions, but that didn’t work, and I really don’t think that’s a reasonable fix, since Apple doesn’t let you use the same password that you’ve used in the last year.

I’m going to do further research on that, but the successful restore was worth an immediate post. 

P.S. I like umlauts.

Old G4 with processor upgrade is crashing

I have a G4 running 10.4.  I upgraded the processor last year.  It’s now panicking often. Blue screens. Freezes. Fun, fun. I am sure the original processor is somewhere, nearby, packed in a moving box.
The only thing I really want to save on that tower is, predictably, my iTunes library which is on a 2nd hard drive which is mounted separately from the original disk.

I suspect a new Mac will be purchased very soon. I have an original Drobo, but have yet to purchase drives for it.

Allow the yelling about backing up to commence.

I’m a bit biased here, as I have always distrusted processor upgrades. They just seemed more trouble and expense than benefit. Now with the Intel machines, I figure they’re pretty much irrelevant.

Your G4 may be salvageable, but I really do think you need a new Mac. Bite that bullet, bubba. And to get your data off the G4, if it won’t boot to FireWire target disk mode by booting while holding down the “T” key, you can buy a Firewire enclosure or even better, a data cable such as this one, for the internal hard drives from which you need to rescue data.

Excellent work buying that Drobo. Now about those drives…

And then… BAAAAAAACCKK UPPPPPPPP!!!!

No calendar events on the iPhone

I added my calenders from the iPhone to my iCal and turned off MobileMe calendars on my phone and synched. After waiting 15 minutes for it to sync, I ended up with no calendar events on my phone. What now? Should I restore?

In iTunes > iPhone > Info tab, scroll to the bottom and check on “Calendars” under “Replace information on this phone”. Hit Apply, and let me know what happens.