Break Away From MobileMe: 7 Free Services to Help You Make the Move
Apple’s replacement for .Mac has had a very rocky start, and has a long way to go before its ready to compete with free alternatives. Many users do not want to move away from MobileMe because of the deep integration with the Mac desktop, while others are reluctant because its hard to find another single service [...]
published on Wednesday, the 12. November 2008, apple-blog
Path Finder 5 - The Finder, greatly enriched again
Developer / Product Page: CocoaTech Price: $40 ($20 upgrade from prior versions; free demo available)This week's Pick of the Week is a two-time repeat winner...though its first win was actually many years ago, and under a different name. It was, in fact, the third-ever Pick of the Week, way back in March of 2002. At the time, the program was called SNAX, and it was a replacement for the Finder. Then, in December 2006, version 4.5 won again. Now, just under two years later, I feel the need to reward it again. Why again, you may ask? Because Path Finder 5 is a great upgrade from version 4, and has finally become my full-time Finder replacement. I've used the prior versions off and on o...
published on Monday, the 10. November 2008, macosxhints
TextSoap 6 updated with user-definable cleaners
unmarked software has released the next major version of its TextSoap application. TextSoap 6 is a text processing utility, one which uses find and replace commands to not only change words, but also copy formatting throughout a document. Aside from being a text editor, TextSoap also integrates with software such as Mail, TextEdit, MS Word and Coda. Version 6 features a new user interface, designe...
published on Wednesday, the 15. October 2008, macintosh-news-network
10.5 Allow non-admin users to add and remove printers
pMy techs and I were searching for a way to allow non-admin users to add and remove printers under 10.5. Unfortunately, we could only find a few hints that involved modifying /etc/cups/cupsd.conf -- which did not really meet our needs (those hints did not allow a standard way for a non-admin user to remove printers). So, here's our solution...Please note that we have only tested this a few times, but it seems to work. What we're doing is editing /etc/authorization. More specifically, we're changing the system.preferences dictionary item within the authorization file so that the group string is set to everyone, rather than admin. One way to do this through the GUI is to copy /etc/authorization to your desktop, add .plist to the end of the filename, edit the file with Property List Editor, save, and remove the .plist extension. Then replace the original authorizat...
published on Wednesday, the 8. October 2008, macosxhints
Disable iTunes store arrow links in iTunes 8
In iTunes 7, there was a preference to disable the links to the iTunes Store -- these are the small arrows that appear when you select a song in your library. In iTunes 8, however, that preference is gone. A bit of digging in the iTunes' binary found the solution, thankfully.If you'd like to disable the iTunes Store link arrows, quit iTunes, open Terminal, and run this command:defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-store-arrow-links -bool FALSERelaunch iTunes, and voila, no more arrows! To reverse this behavior, you can repeat the above command (quit iTunes first), but replace FALSE with TRUE. (Or, if you prefer, you can completely delete the added preference with defaults delete com.apple.iTunes show-store-arrow-links).I'm sure this would have been submitted by someone at some point, but the arrows annoyed me enough to go digging for a solution -- and thanks to Kirk McElhearn for his help in finding and testing the fix!
published on Tuesday, the 9. September 2008, macosxhints
10.5: Disable Data Detectors in Mail
An interesting change in Leopard was the addition of Data Detectors to Mail, which automatically detect info such as dates, times, names, and addresses, and let you use that data directly from the message in iCal. It can be a very convenient feature, but some users find it annoying. To disable it, quit Mail, and in Terminal, simply enter:defaults write com.apple.mail DisableDataDetectors YESIf you want to enable it again, quit Mail, and repeat the above command, but replace YES with NO (confounded double negatives!).[robg adds: This previous hint explains how to enable Data Detectors in iChat, which are disabled by default in that program.]
published on Friday, the 5. September 2008, macosxhints
Put the quoted form of POSIX paths into Script Editor
As a beginner learning the basics of do shell script in AppleScript, I'm finding that most of my file and folder names have spaces in them. As such, I have two choices when writing paths: either escape all the spaces as I type them, or use the AppleScript quoted form of POSIX path construct.Both methods still require significant typing and exact spelling, and I'm from the generation that didn't learn to type. To ease my discomfort, I wrote this script for use in Script Menu:tell application "Finder" set Itms to selection set als to Itms's item 1 as alias set aPath to quoted form of POSIX path of alsend telltell application "Script Editor" activate tell front document set contents of selection to aPath end tellend tellThe script takes the currently-selected file or folder in Finder, and puts its quoted form of POSIX path into Script Editor's front document at the insertion point (or replaces the selection if text is selected)...
published on Friday, the 29. August 2008, macosxhints
Replace Songs in iTunes with Higher Quality Versions Keeping Stats
I had a few albums in my iTunes library that were ripped way back in the SoundJam days, before hard disk capacities were what they are today. After I upgraded my sound system, I decided to re-rip some of my favorites from the the CD into higher quality 256 kbps AAC. The problem, though, was that I had these songs in many different playlists and with high play counts and other information I didn't want to lose!Here's how to get around this problem: Rip the new CDs with the higher quality setting. Trash the files you are going to replace and empty your Trash. The files can be found by right-clicking the songs and choosing "Show in Finder". Back in iTunes, right-click on the new songs you just ripped and select Show in Finder. Keep that window open for future reference. Delete the songs you just ripped from iTunes but tell iTunes to keep the files. Try to play the old songs, the ones that you already deleted from your hard di...
published on Thursday, the 14. August 2008, macosxhints
View high quality app icons in Fusion's Unity mode
When using VMWare in Unity mode, Dock icons and icons shown when using Command-Tab, show up highly pixelated. This can easily rectified with a quick and dirty replacement of the icon.First locate quality replacement images with transparent backgrounds. For instance, use Google images, and run a search on, for example, Internet Explorer icon. I look for icons that are about 300x300 pixels in size or larger. I drag the image to the Desktop and open it with Preview, using a background colour other than the white used on Google Images, so I can quickly determine if the images have a transparent background.Once opened in Preview and deemed acceptable, go to Edit » Copy to copy the image to the clipboard. Locate the relevant .vmwarevm virtual machine file -- typically you'll find them in a Virtual Machines folder in your user's Documents folder. Control-click on the folder and choose Show Package Contents from the p...
published on Monday, the 16. June 2008, macosxhints
10.4: Resurrect the 10.5 Movies widget in Tiger
Recently the Leopard Movies widget, which Steve demoed along with Leopard, stopped working in Tiger. Leopard's built-in Movies widget continues to function, while in Tiger, it gives an error of "invalid zip code." You can make this widget function once again in 10.4.Navigate to /Library/Widgets and find the Movies widget. Control-click on the widget and choose Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu. Then open parser.js in your favorite text editor, and replace all occurrences of A99D3D1A-774C-4914-9E3B-18645117428A with DE7E251E-7758-40A4-98E0-87557E9F31F0 and save. Close any open movie widget in Dashboard, then re-open it. Now it works.[robg adds: I can't test this one here...]
published on Tuesday, the 10. June 2008, macosxhints