Make iTunes play louder...
Given the title, you might think that this either isn't a hint, or it's a "give-me-a-break-mike" hint at that. But hang with me.I've always been frustrated that my wife's iBook way outshined my MacBook when I played iTunes -- even with iTunes and internal volumes set to max. Then Leopard comes, and I did a Quick Look on a music file in the Finder (select the file and hit the Space Bar). I noticed that the Finder played the song much louder than did iTunes.Eventually, I figured out that if in iTunes you enable the equalizer (Window » Equalizer then click the On button), and set the Preamp to its max, the volume now matches the volume of Quick Look in the Finder, less any adjusting on the equalizer. I already had the equalizer on, but the Preamp was set to 0.
published on Tuesday, the 4. November 2008, macosxhints
Set default startup volume from boot volume screen
When you start up a Mac holding down the Option key, the boot volume menu appears on the screen -- this shows all bootable volumes on the screen, making it simple to boot from any volume in your Mac.You can also, it turns out, set the default boot volume (the volume that will boot when you don't hold the Option key down) from this screen. To set the default start-up volume, press Control and click on an arrow under the volume of your choice. When Control is pressed, the upward arrow turns into a circular arrow, denoting the persistence of the choice.Note that I have tested this on only the newest iMac and MacBook Pro.[robg adds: This trick did not work on my November 2006 (2.33GHz Core 2 Duo) MacBook Pro.]
published on Tuesday, the 23. September 2008, macosxhints
10.5: Keep Boot Camp partitions off the desktop
I wanted to prevent the Boot Camp partition from showing up on my user's destkop, while not preventing other mounted disks from showing there. I had tried editing the /etc/fstab file, but ran into glitches when putting that into an image (OS X and Windows XP) and mass-duplicating it for my 6,000 MacBook users. I then noticed that Boot Camp would pick up what the volume's name was in Windows, and name it in OS X accordingly. So I simply put a dot in front of the name while booted into Windows, and rebooted into OS X.After doing this, the partition no longer shows the hard drive icon on the desktop. It doesn't hide the partition from Finder windows, but it does not show it on the desktop. It was a quick and dirty solution that also worked with the image I created. I believe this only works in the newest version of Boot Camp. [robg adds: I've marked this one ...
published on Monday, the 15. September 2008, macosxhints
Confirmed Intel delay will push back MacBook overhauls
Intel Corp. has confirmed that it will delay volume shipments of its upcoming "Montevina" Centrino 2 mobile platform by as much as two months, which will push a release of Apple's redesigned MacBook notebooks to late summer at the earliest. The wo...
published on Wednesday, the 28. May 2008, appleinsider
Mac OS X 10.5.2 update to exceed 400MB?
The next update for Mac OS X may be one of the largest Apple has ever released, accounts say. During last week's Macworld event, it is said that a new build of Mac OS X 10.5.2 was circulated amongst developers, under the version name 9C16. Aside from adding support for Remote Disks (for the MacBook Air) and using networked volumes as Time Machine...
published on Monday, the 21. January 2008, macintosh-news-network
Run other apps from the installer
I have found that having an installer DVD with me at all times can be very useful. I don't like to actually carry the DVD with me, so I made a 10GB partition on my boot disk (MacBook Pro). I restored the Leopard DVD to this partition. Now all I have to do to boot from the 'Install DVD' is to use the Option key when I boot. That's not the tip, however; this is. I may want to launch an application other than the ones found in the Utilities menu. Since Terminal is there, I tried to use Terminal to launch (using the open command) other applications. open, however, is not on the Install DVD, but it will still work if used from another partition. For example (assuming system is my regular boot volume): /Volumes/system/usr/bin/open /Applications/TextEdit.app But what if the regular boot partition is shot? The answer is to copy the open command from the regular boot partition to the installer partition: cp /u...
published on Monday, the 19. November 2007, macosxhints
A fix for Vista only seeing one CPU in Boot Camp
I've been using Vista Ultimate on my MacBook Pro (Core 2 Duo), and since installing the latest Boot Camp drivers package, it only saw a single core. When booting up, prior to the GUI loading, it would show one system processor in the plain text area where it lists the Windows version. Once fully booted up, the Task Manager's performance window would only show one processor, although Device Manager did show two processors and the About window (right-click My Computer » Properties) did list the CPU as a dual core, though all performance measuring apps listed one as available.To fix this, you will need to access the Vista NTFS partition from another OS. There are a few hints on how to do this (here's one), and I followed the installation of MacFUSE and NTFS-3G, unmounted the read-only Vista partition, created the directory /Volumes/Windows, then remounted it using the command line...
published on Monday, the 24. September 2007, macosxhints
Check for a dead battery in a Mac's remote control
I was having some trouble with my Mac's infrared remote, and I thought maybe its battery had died -- but I wasn't sure how to test that.After some thought, I came up with a quick way to test the battery. Just open Photo Booth and point your remote at the camera (make sure the end of the remote is visible in the onscreen image), then press any button on the remote (volume up or down, for instance). If you see a bright light emitting from the remote in the Photo Booth window, you know the remote's working OK and has battery juice.[robg adds: I tried this with my MacBook Pro, and it indeed works quite well -- the infrared light is picked up by the camera, and shows up very brightly in the Photo Booth window. Obviously, you could use any app that lets you see the camera's input in real time, not just Photo Booth.]
published on Thursday, the 30. August 2007, macosxhints
10.4: Regain 'quiet' sound settings after 10.4.9 update
The 10.4.9 update's "feature" of boosting built-in speaker output on various Macs came with mixed reviews. I'm one of the ones who thinks the lowest GUI-accessible setting is now too loud. Quite by accident, I discovered that turning down the volume all the way, then muting and unmuting the speakers via the keyboard gives me the quiet sound I've been missing. [robg adds: This is the first I've heard of a volume boost in 10.4.9; my MacBookPro seems the same now as it was before, so I'm curious about it. If anyone knows more, please post in the comments -- which models did this supposedly affect, for instance?]
published on Tuesday, the 24. April 2007, macosxhints
How to rip .VRO files from DVD video recorders
Last night I was presented with a DVD-RW that had a recording (of a portion of a local television news broadcast) created with a DVD video recorder. I've heard people talk about not being able to play these disks in other devices (such as computers or regular DVD players). I slapped it into my MacBook Pro and, when it mounted almost immediately on my Desktop, I thought I was home free. Not so much.The mounted volume contained one folder that appeared to be locked (it had the "locked" badge on it). I could open it in the Finder, but it appeared to contain no files. I launched Terminal and cd'ed into the folder. When I tried to ls, I was told I had insuffiecient privileges. A quick sudo (via !!) later I was greeted with two files: VR_MOVIE.INF and VR_MOVIE.VRO. The first of these was something like 16KB, while the other was just over 1GB. Bingo. But no. All attempts to copy the .VRO file were in vain.I tried VLC, Handbrake, ...
published on Wednesday, the 29. November 2006, macosxhints