Monthly Archives: September 2009

September 2009 Links

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Links for the month of September.

Here are a few links of interest to the folks who read my books and articles or watch my training videos.

  • Snow Leopard Features Suggest It’s a Touchscreen OS – If you’ve got one of Axiotron’s awesome Modbooks, and you’re running Snow Leopard, you may have already stumbled across a few features that make your Mac so much easier to use. It’s unlikely Apple had Axiotron in mind when it included these features, though, so what’s the real story here? On TheAppleBlog. Thanks to @DonPerrault for sharing the link on Twitter.
  • Must-have / essential applications on Mac OS X (10.6 – Snow Leopard) – Interesting list of applications that a Snow Leopard user might want to have on his system. By Trent Lloyd.
  • Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: the Ars Technica review – Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard has landed. This time around, Apple goes light on the glitz in favor of some heavy work under the hood. John Siracusa dives deep into Apple's new OS offering to see what's new, what's still the same, and whether it's worth upgrading.
  • Snow Leopard’s Four Best Improvements (for Civilians) – Most of Mac OS 10.6's changes are deep in its underpinnings for developers to put to good use. But what do the rest of us get out of Snow Leopard? Modest, but nice, improvements to the everyday Mac workflow. Note: This isn't a thorough Snow Leopard review. It's a boiled-down, "what's in it for me" rundown for time-strapped folks who want the bottom line. On Lifehacker.
  • MacJury #913: Passing Judgement on Snow Leopard (Part 2) – More MacJurors weigh in on the newest version of Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard. This panel discusses why Snow Leopard looks better and what that means for graphics professionals as well as the casual user, why the transition to Snow Leopard is “important but not urgent,” and the issues surrounding QuickTime 10. The panel also discusses why the newest version of the Mac OS will force developers to stay focused, and share some of the best new changes to existing features. Featuring yours truly as one of the jurists.
  • Old WordPress Versions Under Attack – Otto42 of OttoDestruct, a key WordPress developer and supporter, reports that there is an “attack” on older versions of WordPress right now. The number of sites hit by this is growing every hour. Protect your WordPress blog now: UPDATE NOW!!! On Lorelle on WordPress.
  • How to Keep WordPress Secure – Right now there is a worm making its way around old, unpatched versions of WordPress. From Matt on WordPress.org.
  • If Architects Had to Work Like Web Designers – This is why I don't do Web work for other people. Brilliant! On DigitalSurvivors.
  • Fonts for web design: a primer – Modern CSS provides web designers with an unprecedented level of control over online typography. Restrictions are still imposed however by the limited number of “common” fonts—those typefaces that are generally available cross-platform. This article looks at the fonts web designers have available to them, and also considers their suitability for various tasks. On dev.opera.com.
  • Apple OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard – A Wired.com product review.
  • How to Build a Hackintosh with Snow Leopard, Start to Finish – Detailed instructions for putting Snow Leopard on a netbook for under $900. On Lifehacker.
  • Snow Leopard Is Less Secure but Safer than Windows, Say Experts – The title says it all. Read more on Lifehacker.com.
  • Upgrading Your Mac To Snow Leopard Using Your USB drive – Jeffry Thurana Explains how to upgrade a Mac without an optical drive. On MakeUseOf.com.
  • Found Footage: Snow Leopard hidden features, great video by a 16 year-old – Matt Fisher has created a video on hidden features in Snow Leopard and although we have covered some of these before, this you have to see. In four minutes and twenty-nine seconds Matt covers more content than most people can cover in an hour, and he does it with grace and total clarity. On TUAW.
  • Snow Leopard: what’s to love (or at least appreciate) – A list of improvements in Snow Leopard that you might not initially notice. On TUAW.
  • Use New Exposé Features in Snow Leopard – In Mac OS X 10.5, you could combine the use of Exposé's Application Windows mode and the Command-Tab application switcher by first activating Exposé and then pressing Command-Tab. When you selected another application and released Command-Tab, that application would come to the foreground in Exposé mode, revealing all its windows. Alternatively, you could release just the Command key, and cycle through all your applications (while still in Exposé mode) by just pressing the Tab key. Read more on PCWorld.com
  • 50 Essential Web Typography Tutorials, Tips, Guides and Best Practices – The title says it all; the article has links to 50 resources. On Speckyboy Design Magazine. Thanks to @EstherSchindler for sharing the link.
  • How-To: Resurrect Your AppleTalk Printer in Snow Leopard – Did Snow Leopard leave your old AppleTalk printer out in the cold? Grab a hot cup of cocoa and warm your printer up with some of these handy tips to continue to use your classic AppleTalk printer with your state of the art operating system. On The Apple Blog.
  • Three Useful Snow Leopard Links… – Author and programmer Dave Mark shares three links to software you might want to install on Snow Leopard. (I use 2 of the 3.) On Dave Mark's Blog.
  • 18 Resources to Help you Write Better Blog Titles – This is one I really needed and should study. I write the crappies blog titles. But it's an important skill to master if you want more hits. Thanks to @estherschindler for tweeting the link. On Bloggusion.com
  • Install Snow Leopard on Your Hackintosh PC, No Hacking Required – If you're not comfortable with command-line hacking, you can now install Snow Leopard on your Hackintosh with just a few point-and-clicks. On LifeHacker.
  • The Snow Leopard appreciation society – "A lot has been written about Snow Leopard since its release two weeks ago: but maybe the best way of describing Apple's latest operating system update is by comparing it to a second-hand Volkswagen I owned a couple of years after finishing university." Read more on ZDNet.com.
  • Snow Leopard Gives 50% Performance Boost When Running Optimized Software | Cult of Mac – Snow Leopard can give your Mac a 50% performance improvement when running optimized software, a developer has found. On CultOfMac.
  • QuickBooks update adds Snow Leopard support, bug fixes – Intuit has released the QuickBooks 2009 for Mac R8.2 patch, adding Snow Leopard support to the small-business financial software. On MacNN.
  • Report: Nine Scientifically Proven Ways to Get Retweeted on Twitter – Nine most effective ways to get retweeted on Twitter. On FastCompany. Thanks to @WeberBooks for sharing the link.
  • See Hidden Files in Snow Leopard’s Open and Save Dialogs – Business Center – PC World – Many of OS X's files and folders are hidden when working with the system–most of the Unix-only folders, such as /usr, /etc, and /bin, for instance. If you want to always see these hidden files and folders, you can do just that. On PC World.
  • Snow Leopard tip: Minimize to icon – Now you can minimize windows "behind" their parent app's icon. Here's how. On TUAW.
  • Inside Snow Leopard’s UTI: Apple fixes the Creator Code – Snow Leopard's abandonment of Creator Code metadata, used to open a file with its creating application, has some users are worried that Apple has killed off a core Mac-centric feature. Instead, Apple has invented a superior alternative for the old Creator Code in order to support a variety of new features. Here's why, and what the new Uniform Type Identifiers offer. On Apple Insider.

Snow Leopard: Incompatible Software

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How Snow Leopard yells you and what you should do.

One of the drawbacks of updating to any new operating system — be it the latest version of Mac OS or Windows — is the risk that some of your older software might not be compatible. But it makes sense: as your system software is updated to add more features and take advantage of the power and capabilities of more modern computer hardware, software applications that are not updated along with it may simply cease functioning. This is probably the best argument for updating all of the software you rely on regularly.

When you install Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard on your Mac, it automatically reviews the software installed on your computer. At the very end of the installation process, it notifies you of incompatibilities it found with a dialog like this:

Incompatibilities Found

Incompatible SoftwareClicking the More Info button displays a dialog with details about which software is incompatible and what the Snow Leopard installer did with it. In this example, Snow Leopard won’t work with my Palm Sync software. That’s okay with me because I no longer use a Palm (I have a BlackBerry now), which is why I never bothered to update the Palm Sync software. By moving it to the Incompatible Software folder it created, the Snow Leopard installer made it easy for me to simply delete it from my hard disk.

If, however, I still used and needed that software, I’d be researching Snow Leopard-compatible updates for it. If the software was still supported by its developer, I’d likely find one, install it, and be able to use it with Snow Leopard.

The dialog shown here includes a link that you should definitely follow if you either see this dialog or before you update to Snow Leopard if you believe some of your older software may not be compatible. The link is to a Knowledge Base article titled “Mac OS X v10.6: About incompatible software.” It includes a known list of incompatible software, as well as links to the developer sites to get updates.

How this Affects Me

I use one old piece of hardware — a 10-year-old HP LaserJet 2100TN printer — and one old, unsupported piece of software — ecto — on a regular basis. The HP printer required some reconfiguration to get working, as I wrote about here. But in all honesty, I was prepared to replace it if I couldn’t get it to work — I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect a piece of computer hardware to last that long and I consider myself lucky that it has. ecto, which is the software I use daily to compose blog entries offline, hasn’t been updated in at least two years. Its developer handed it off to another developer who has pretty much abandoned it. With the release of Snow Leopard, it has begun to show some minor compatibility problems. Although it’s still functional now, I’m beginning to think of its replacement; I seriously doubt that it’ll be updated or continue to work with future versions of Mac OS.

But that’s just the way it is. If you want to move forward, you have to move everything forward.

While I realize that there has been a great deal of whining from some Mac OS users about Snow Leopard incompatibilities, I don’t think the problem is as serious as some might want you to believe. If application software is regularly updated and supported by its developer, it’s likely to be Snow Leopard compatible either now or by the end of October 2009. (Remember, Snow Leopard was originally slated for release in September, so its early release caught a lot of developers by surprise.) It’s really not fair to expect Apple to find and test its operating system software with every Mac OS application developed in during the past 10 years. It’s the developer’s job to make its software compatible with new hardware and operating system software. This is probably the best reason to avoid software developed by fly-by-night developers who might not be around when system software updates are released.

If you do have older software that’s no longer support and is “mission critical” to your work or organization, the answer is simple: don’t upgrade your hardware or system software. If it works on whatever setup you currently have, just stick with that until you can find an alternative solution.

It’s in the Book!

Snow Leopard Book CoverYou can find more information about using application software with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide.:

  • Application Basics is covered in Chapter 10, pages 183-208.
  • TextEdit is covered in Chapter 11, pages 209-232.
  • Internet Applications are covered in Chapter19, pages 405-444.
  • Mac OS Utilities is covered in Chapter 24, pages 569-594.

Repair Your Hard Disk with Disk First Aid

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How to launch Disk Utility so you can use its First Aid features on your internal hard disk.

Note: This article is an update of one I wrote way back when Mac OS X 10.3 Panther was released. The instructions here apply to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and will likely apply to most future versions of Mac OS.

Disk Utility IconMac OS X includes a utility called Disk Utility, which can be found in the Utilities folder inside your Applications folder. This program offers features for verifying and repairing permissions and disks, erasing and partitioning volumes, creating and working with disk images, and using RAID.

Disk First Aid

Of this bunch, the First Aid features of Disk Utility are something you might want to check out if you haven’t already. I like to use this feature to clean up file permissions and repair minor directory damage on my hard disks on a regular basis. The trouble is, to use the disk repair features on your startup disk, you can’t start up from that disk or run the software from that disk.

And therein lies the problem: how do you repair your hard disk with Disk Utility if you can’t access the repair feature when you start it from your hard disk?

The answer is on your Mac OS X installation DVD. That disc, which includes the Disk Utility software, can be used to start your computer.

Those of you who have above average knowledge of the installation discs may be scratching your heads. You know that when you start a computer with a Mac OS X installation disc, the Installer application automatically runs. When you use the Installer’s Quit Installer command, the Finder does not appear. Instead, the installer tells you it will restart your computer. So how do you launch Disk Utility?

I’ll tell you.

First of all, you know how to restart your computer from a bootable DVD, right? Insert the DVD and then do one of the following:

  • Use the Startup Disk pane of the System Preferences application to identify the disc as your startup disk.
  • Restart your computer with the Option key held down, select the DVD when the startup disk icons appear, and press Return.
  • Restart your computer with the C key held down.

Wait for your computer to restart from the DVD. Then:

  1. In the first dialog that appears, select your language and click the forward arrow button.
  2. Wait while the installer prepares the installation. Don’t worry; it’s not changing anything on your hard disk.
  3. When the menu bar appears, choose Utilities > Disk Utility.

Disk Utility opens. You can then use its First Air features on your internal hard disk.

When you’re finished:

  1. Choose Disk Utility > Quit Disk Utility or press Command-Q to quit.
  2. When the installer appears, choose Utilities > Startup Disk.
  3. When Startup Disk appears, select your hard disk icon and click Restart.
  4. Click Restart in the confirmation dialog that appears.

Your computer restarts from your hard disk.

It’s in the Book!

Snow Leopard Book CoverYou can find more information about hard disks and using Disk Utility with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide.:

  • Storage Media is covered in Chapter 6, pages 97-126.
  • Mac OS Utilities is covered in Chapter 24, pages 569-594.

Switching to the Mini Player in iTunes 9

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Don’t you hate it when they change the way something works?

I updated to iTunes 9 while on the road. This afternoon, as I prepare to get some work done in my hotel room, I fired up iTunes on my MacBook Pro for a little background music. I only have about 900 songs on this computer, but that’s enough to keep me satisfied while I work.

I started up iTunes, clicked OK when it told me it couldn’t connect to the iTunes Store, and started up the music. I then clicked on the zoom button in the title bar to get the mini player window.

But the window zoomed, like any other window. No mini player window.

iTunes Mini Player

In iTunes, clicking the green zoom button always toggled the window between a regular iTunes window and the mini player. For years. I clicked it about six times, thinking I was missing something. I wasn’t.

The yellow minimize button didn’t display it either. No big surprise there. I didn’t bother clicking the red close button.

I then spent the next three minutes hunting down the setting that would get me the mini player window. I checked the obvious places — well, obvious to me, anyway — including the Window menu and preferences. I finally found it and its shortcut key listed under the view menu: Switch to Mini Player or Shift-Command-M.

Problem solved.

But don’t you hate it when they change the way things work?

September 22, 2009 Update: I don’t know if it’s my imagination or not, but with the release of the iTunes 9.0.1 update, this “problem” seems to have gone away. The green zoom button now works just like it used to. That’s got me wondering: did Apple “fix” it because they realized it was “broken” or did they change it back because so many people were whining about it?

Mac OS: Ejecting a Disc So You Can Start from Another

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Eject a disc so you can insert the disc you want to start from.

Here’s the scenario:

You want to install Snow Leopard on your Mac but, for whatever reason, there’s a bootable CD or DVD in your computer’s optical drive. If you hold down C while starting up, it’ll boot from that disc. If you don’t hold down anything while starting up, it’ll boot from whatever disk it last started from or the disk set in the Startup Disk preferences pane. If you repeatedly press the Eject Media key while starting up, it may or may not eject the disc you don’t want to start from — in any case, it’ll likely start before you can insert the correct disc.

Sound far-fetched? It isn’t. It happened to me the other day.

My iMac’s hard disk was feeling ill and simply wouldn’t boot. I’d last started it with my old Leopard install disc inserted. When I got my Snow Leopard Install disc, I decided to run its Disk Utility First Aid routine on the sickly hard disk. Trouble was, I’d shut down the computer with the Leopard disc inserted.

Here’s how to eject a disc so you can insert another disc for startup. (The “screenshots” here were created with my digital camera, since it’s impossible to create a screenshot from within Mac OS X before the computer has completed its startup process.)

  1. Hold down the Option key while starting your Mac. Keep the key held down until a screen with startup disk icons appears.
    Fig1
  2. Click the icon for the disc you want to eject to select it.
  3. Press the Eject Media button on the keyboard. The disk comes out and its icon disappears from the screen.
    Fig2
  4. Insert the disc you want to start from. Its icon appears onscreen.
    Fig3
  5. Click the disc icon to select it.
  6. Press Return. The computer completes the startup process, using the disc you selected.

As you may already know (or should have realized after reading this), if you hold down the Option key at startup, you can choose your startup disk on the fly. You might find this useful if, for some reason, you have multiple bootable disks on your computer.

It’s in the Book!

Snow Leopard Book CoverYou can find more information about hard disks and using Disk Utility with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide.:

  • Storage Media is covered in Chapter 6, pages 97-126.
  • Mac OS Utilities is covered in Chapter 24, pages 569-594.

Snow Leopard: Five Tips in Five Days

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On Peachpit.com.

Snow Leopard Book CoverIn the crazy days before the release of Snow Leopard, Peachpit asked me to pull five Snow Leopard tips from Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide for release on their Web site over a five day period. The tips began appearing on August 31 and they’re now all available.

Here are links for your convenience:

Using an HP LaserJet 2100TN with Snow Leopard

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When Mac OS can’t connect to the printer.

Snow Leopard is the first version of Mac OS that doesn’t support AppleTalk. While that shouldn’t be an issue for most folks, if you’re like me and have an ancient printer that uses Ethernet and AppleTalk to connect to your computer, you might have a problem.

With me, the printer is an HP LaserJet 2100TN manufactured in 1999. Yes, I’m using 10-year-old laser printer. It works fine — or at least it did on all versions of Mac OS through Leopard. But when I upgraded to Snow Leopard the other day, my Mac suddenly couldn’t see the printer.

I’ve been wanting a duplex laser printer for some time now, and I simply haven’t been able to justify the cost. With this sudden incompatibility issue, it looked like I had a good excuse to buy a new printer. But what to do with the old one? My husband is very happy with my previous printer, an HP LaserJet 4MP. And wouldn’t it be better if I could just get it to work?

So I went online. I soon discovered that the good folks at HP have written a support article all about using HP printers with Snow Leopard. I highly recommend reading this article if you’re having any trouble at all connecting an HP laser printer to your Mac under Snow Leopard. It provides steps that I will not duplicate here.

I read the article carefully. It told me two things:

  • My HP LaserJet 2100TN should work with Snow Leopard, even though AppleTalk was no longer an option. It provided complete instructions for connecting.
  • My HP Color LaserJet 2600n would not work with Snow Leopard.

Wow. Was this screwed up. You see, when I couldn’t get the 2100TN to work, I reinstalled the drivers for my 2600n (from the HP Web site) and successfully set it up. So HP was wrong: it would work with Snow Leopard. And no matter how many times I tried to follow the instructions for setting up my LaserJet 2100TN, I was unable to get it to work.

Now the 2100TN is a network printer that uses Enternet connected to a JetDirect device that’s installed on the side of the machine. I recalled having a problem with setup years ago, when I had a static IP address. Back then, I’d had to manually assign an IP address to the printer to get it to work. I really don’t recall why or how I did this, but since it continued to work despite many connection changes, I didn’t change anything.

I pressed the only two buttons on top of the machine simultaneously to get two pages of self-test and configuration information. It told me my IP address was the unlikely 65.101.62.77. I tried repeatedly to use this information with setup, but could not successfully print. Perhaps I had to go back to the default settings?

I found this article on PrinterTechs.com that explained how to do a factory reset of just about any HP LaserJet printer, including mine. I followed the instructions. Then I printed another configuration sheet. Now my IP address was the even more unlikely 0.0.0.0. Of course, this wouldn’t work either.

I powered down the printer, waited a minute or two, and turned it on again. I printed another configuration sheet. Now my IP address was 192.0.0.192. Ah, now we were getting somewhere. But when I used that address, it still wouldn’t work.

I opened the Network preferences pane and saw that Ethernet had a self-assigned IP address. I chose Using DHCP with manual address from the Configure IPv4 pop-up menu and entered 192.0.0.191 (why not?) in the IP address field. I clicked Apply. Then I tried to add the printer again. This time it connected. And when I went back to the Network preferences pane, it showed that Ethernet was connected.

Ethernet Connection

I tried to print and succeeded.

Is this the “right” way to fix this problem? Who knows? All I know is that it works. And you know what they say: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

So it looks like I won’t be buying a new duplex printer after all. I just don’t need it.

And, for the record, the configuration page also told me that I’d printed 35,200 pages during the 10 or so years I’ve had the printer. Sadly, that number was reset along with the IP address.

It’s in the Book!

Snow Leopard Book CoverYou can find more information about setting up printers for use with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide.:

  • Printing & Faxing is covered in Chapter 17, pages 361-388.
  • Networking is covered in Chapter 20, pages 445-486.

Snow Leopard and Rosetta

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What you need to know.

Have you upgraded to Lion? Then you probably want to read this instead.

Yes, most older Mac OS applications are compatible with Snow Leopard. But perhaps not the way Snow Leopard is normally installed. It might need Rosetta.

Who?

Simply put, Rosetta is a special part of Mac OS that enables older software to run on newer Macs with Snow Leopard. Trouble is, Rosetta isn’t installed as part of a standard Mac OS installation. Instead, your Mac offers to install it for you the first time you need it.

So today, when I opened Quicken 2007 for the first time after upgrading to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, I saw the following dialog:

Install Rosetta?

The options are pretty straightforward:

  • Not Now doesn’t install Rosetta. That means you can’t open the program that needed it — in my case, Quicken.
  • Install uses your Internet connection (you do have one, don’t you?) to download Rosetta from Apple’s server. It then installs Rosetta on your Mac. You’ll see a dialog like this while it works:
    Installing Rosetta

Once Rosetta is installed, try opening the application again. It should work.

I can’t think of any reason not to install Rosetta.

I can think of plenty of reasons to keep your software updated. The first reason is that you can avoid having to install additional software like Rosetta for compatibility. Unfortunately, a newer version of Quicken simply isn’t available. Yet.

If you know you need to install Rosetta, you can avoid this whole process by installing it when installing Snow Leopard. You do this by customizing the installation; no Internet connection is required:

Custom Snow Leopard Installation

It’s in the Book!

Snow Leopard Book CoverYou can find more information about installing Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, including how to customize an installation in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide.

Installing Mac OS X 10.6 is covered on pages 2-5.