Maria’s Guides

• Tweaking the look of Leopard
  A great summary of some of the tools currently available to modify the look of some of Leopard’s interface features. Thanks to @naquada on Twitter for the link. On 123MacMini.com.
  (tags: Leopard Mac customize)
• Hack Attack : Install Leopard on your PC in 3 easy steps!
  Another good link from @naquada on Twitter. This one explains how to install Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on a PC! I’d love to hear from people who have done this and are working with the result in a production environment. Maybe I’ll keep that Dell PC after all
  (tags: hacks Leopard pc)

A tip for readers.

Occasionally, I’ll release updated pages to my books when something has changed or is otherwise incorrect. I did that the other day when I released updated pages 90-91 of my Leopard book for Spotlight feature corrections.

This morning, I got a message from a reader who had downloaded the revised pages. She wrote:

I just bought your excellent book, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, and noted the corrected pages 90-91 online. A suggestion: Could you have the .pdf pages (and also corrected screenshots, e.g., Figure 5) be the same size as the pages (or figures) in your book ? That way, one could paste the corrected pages over the original pages rather than having to fold 8.5 x 11 paper in half.

I admit I was baffled for a moment. You see, the pages are the same size. The PDFs were created from the same document Peachpit’s production department uses to print the book.

But just in case I was missing something, I printed out pages 90-91 from the PDF to make sure. They were the same size.

Well, that isn’t exactly true. Like the reader who wrote to me, I printed the pages on standard (in the US anyway) 8-1/2 x 11 inch paper. So the pages were that size.

But the content was the right size. So I advised:

When you print the pages from Adobe Reader, make sure Page Scaling is set to None. Print on regular paper. Then cut the pages down to the book trim size, 7 x 9 inches. You will be cutting off part of the gray thumbtab because it’s set up with a bleed.

I hope that helps anyone else interested in inserting pages into their copy of the book.

As for screenshots that I put on the Web site, I’ll make an effort to get them down to the right size in case you want to paste them over the old shot in the book. But they might not print the same size they appear onscreen. Besides, the figures in the book tend to be a bit small. Wouldn’t you rather have them larger so you can see them better?

Or maybe it’s just my middle-aged eyes…

Clarification for my Leopard book readers.

Early in Leopard development, Apple clearly indicated on its Web site that Time Machine would work with the AirPort Extreme’s AirPort Disk feature. To test this out, I obtained an AirPort Extreme and used it to set up an AirPort disk. And yes, with one of the pre-release versions of Leopard, this feature did work.

But somewhere along the line, the feature broke. Apple removed reference to the compatibility from its Web site. Leopard was released and Time Machine would not work with an AirPort Disk.

You can read confirmation of this in “Apple doubles back on Time Machine and AirPort Disk” and “Time Machine and AirPort Disk: Together again. Sort of” on Ars Technica. You can also find a workaround in “10.5: Make Time Machine work with AirPort and AFP disks.”

I tend to agree with the folks at AppleInsider, who claim in “Briefly: Apple still working on Time Machine’s AirPort Disk support” that:

The findings suggest that the AirPort Disk support under Time Machine could resurface in an upcoming maintenance update to Leopard, the first of which is well underway. However, it should also be noted that Apple has pulled features from its major operating system in the past and never looked back.

So, to that end, I’d advise readers not to depend on using Time Machine with an AirPort Disk, at least not on the near future.

This is unfortunate, because Time Machine compatibility was one of the main reasons the owner of an older AirPort Extreme base station (like me) would consider purchasing a new AirPort Extreme that supported the AirPort Disk feature. I said as much in an article I wrote for Peachpit’s Web site before Leopard was released. Without this compatibility, I’m just not motivated to upgrade my base station. And I suspect there are others in the same situation.

We’ll just have to wait and see.