QA Graphic
June 12, 2012

Apple's Magic Mouse

Not sure why, but Apple's Magic Mouse doesn't enable the Two-button click by default. This means that you can't do right click to see a drop down menu of options.

To enable, Click in System Preferences. Left-handed users can reassign left and right click, as well.

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June 8, 2012

New iMac

Yesterday, my wife surprised me with a new iMac. Wow! What a fantastic gift! I am very excited to have a new computer! My existing computers are about 8-10 years old, so getting a new computer is a very welcome surprise!

As tempting as I was to rip open the box, I decided not to open the box right away. I know of a website that tracks when the best time to purchase an iMac and recommends if it's a good time to purchase.

Sure enough when I checked, I discovered that Apple is overdue on refreshing the iMac product line and new iMacs could be announced as soon as next Monday. So, I decided to wait on opening the box and see what happens on Monday at the WWDC.

Its so hard to wait. Knowing that a new iMac is sitting in the living room, waiting for me to open it and explore all the new features. Intel Processor, Mac OX Lion, Facetime, Thurderbold, AMD graphics, and a nice quiet machine that starts up really fast.

Meanwhile I can start planning...

New Computer, Dual Monitor

When I set up my new iMac, I want to connect my 20" Apple Cinema Display as a second monitor. Fortunitate for me that the Cinema Display uses a DVI port so all I need is a Mini-DVI to DVI Adapter which costs about ~$20 at the Apple store or about $15 in other retail stores online.

Hard Drive Docking Station

The new computer comes with 1TB hard drive, which is pretty much bigger than anything else that I have right now. I'll have to get a hard drive docking station to moved some of my old data to the new computer.

New Software

I'll have to checkout the advantages/disadvantages of various Window emulators such as Parallels, VMWare or Bootcamp. I have some old Virtual PC instances that I may want to merge over to the new computer. However, since I haven't run Windows at home for many years, it may not be worth the effort.

Software Upgrade

I'll have to update several of my applications to use the latest Intel technology. Here's the list of applications that I'll probably upgrade:

That's all I can think of for now. Very excited about getting a new iMac!

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June 5, 2012

Record Comcast DVR Video to Powerbook

Recently I had to pull off a video that I recorded on my Comcast DVD, I found the following link to be very helpful:

http://jpicune.wordpress.com/2006/10/13/record-shows-from-your-comcast-hd-dvr-onto-your-mac/

The page mentions downloading the 'FireWire SDK 22' from Apple. Apple only has the 'FireWire SDK 26' version available. You need to search the Apple Support database to get the file.

I had no problems getting the Video onto my Powerbook computer. Once it got on the computer I had to convert it to mp4 format, as the default video format isn't supported by many applications. There's all sorts of Commercial Applications (ie Quicktime Plugins) that can do the conversion. I found that 'Handbreak' did the converstion fine, and its free!

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December 12, 2011

Using X11 and Linux

Here are some basic instructions on getting X11 on Macintosh to work with a Linux server. These particular instructions should work with Mac Tiger, Leopard or greater - which have X11 already installed and configured.

These instructions assume that you are connecting to a remote server via SSH, using Telnet or other protocols require different instructions.

Using SSH, you simply pass the -X command when connecting to a remote server:

1. Open up Terminal

2. Type the following command:
ssh -Xl root linuxserver

3. Enter a password

4. Connected!

To test, you can just type in:

xeyes &

You should see a new window open and a couple of eyes watching you! This means that you have the power to use any x11 application on the remote server. (You add the ampersand to have the window open as a separate process.

Congratulations and have fun with x11!

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October 28, 2011

Enable agent forwarding on OSX

Here's how to enable enable agent forwarding on Macintosh OS 10.5 (Leopard)

In this example, I am on the machine name "computer-5" with the username sjobs and want to get to apple.acclaim.com using a host server called aspen.acclaim.com without having to type in a username/password. This is done using agent forwarding, a cool feature of SSH, so

I emailed the administrator my id_dsa.pub file and they put it in the home directory on aspen.acclaim.com. I then ran the following steps. Items in blue is what I actually typed in when I opened up the Terminal application:

computer-5:~ sjobs$ ssh-add .ssh/id_dsa
Identity added: .ssh/id_dsa (.ssh/id_dsa)
computer-5:~ sjobs$ ssh -A aspen.acclaim.com
Last login: Fri Oct 23 18:56:24 1998 from root.netscape.com
[sjobs@comp ~]$ ssh -A apple.acclaim.com
[sjobs@apple.acclaim.com ~]$

The above is a short step of what needs to be done. Hopefully this helps you into the right direction.


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May 20, 2011

iPhone Homescreen

A few months ago I got an iPhone, a few days after they were available to Verizon users. I have been waiting a long time for the phone and it everything that I could hope for in a phone. I haven't had any problems with drop calls or using the data portion of the phone.

I have had better phones work with my hearing aids, but this phone does an alright job. There are plenty of external hands free options, so I am not really concern about the hearing aid compatibility functionality.

Attached to this posting is the default screen that I have on my iPhone. (Click on the image to see a larger view of the home screen.)

I have it set up so that the most popular Social Media Apps are on the bottom of the home screen; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.  Evernote App is on the home screen with the intent to use it, but I don't use it that much on the iPhone as I do on my Desktop or Laptop.

The most popular game I play on the iPhone is Words with Friends, thus it's the only app to make it on the home page.

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April 22, 2011

Benchmarks

I am thinking of getting a new iMac 3.2GHz Intel Core i3. The question is what am I going to see in performance from my current Dual 1.42 Ghz PowerPC G4 Macintosh 3.2GHz (Mirrored Drive Doors)

According to benchmarks the Power Mac G4 scored 1230 while the iMac scored 5924. An improvement of 4694! This appears to be a good reason to get another computer. My Powerbook G3, which I still use, scored a low 215 on the Benchmark test. Yikes!

The downside of the iMac is that I wouldn't be able to expand the computer any more. This isn't really a problem since the only thing that I would add would be additional disk space, and I think I would be better off using an external drive than an internal drive.

I am still on the sidelines of if I really need a new computer right now. But the benchmark testing clearly shows the power advantage that I'll see when I get the new computer.

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August 31, 2009

Cleaning Powerbook

I need to make some space available on my Powerbook G4 for upcoming vacation. There's very little space available for pictures and video that I'll be on taking on our trip. I am not sure what's using up all the disk space on my laptop, my initial guess is a lot of small files and not a few large files.

Here's the plan on freeing up disk space on the laptop:

iPhoto Library
Clean out all the old photos that I don't need, back them up to a DVD and remove the orginals from computer

iTunes Library
Remove all old pod casts. There's no need to keep archive of old podcasts. I can always goto iTunes and get the old recordings at any time.

Large Files
Search the computer for large files greater than 2MB. Backup any files that haven't been used for a while and delete them from the computer.

Mailbox
All my mail is archive on my desktop computer. I can go through my mail and delete anything I don't need. This means cleaning out the SPAM directory, there's zero reason to keep any spam mail. Pretty much the only valuable mail I have is the sent mail.

Applications
Backup all unused Application and removed them from the laptop. This includes games that I don't plan on using. I have plenty of cool games on my iPod touch and won't be taking the laptop out on the airplane to play games. Is there any reason to even have IE on my computer any more?

Using the above guidelines, I should be able to have enough space for my photos and video that I'll be taking on my vacation.


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August 25, 2009

Powerbook Users

Apple has announced the latest OS will be available earlier than originally schedule. Apple consumers can get 10.6 (Snow Leopard ) this Friday. However, I found this little note on ClubMac's website:

Upgrade Information for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard:
Please note, that only Apple OS X 10.5 Leopard users are eligible for the Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard upgrade.  Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger & earlier OS users will need to purchase either versions of the Mac Box Set.  Also, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard requires a Mac with an Intel processor.

This means that I won't be standing in line at the Natick Collections getting the latest OS software. All my Macintosh computers are using the old processors. Maybe this is the time to start thinking of getting a new computer?

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April 29, 2009

LG vx8360

I am working on getting some wallpaper pictures on my LG vx8360. Here are some of the specs that I have found:

Main Display: 240 x 320 pixels
Front Display: 96 x 96 pixels

I'll put up some wallpaper on this blog once I put it on my cellphone.

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About

A Mac veteran since 1989, I'm here to share my experience with tips and tricks every Friday. Witnessing the evolution of Mac software and hardware firsthand, I've gained a deep understanding of how these machines work and can help you troubleshoot any issues that may come up.

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WednesdayAffinity
ThursdayBBEdit
FridayMacintosh
SaturdayInternet Tools
SundayOpen Topic
MondayMedia Monday
TuesdayQA