Mac Tips `n Tricks

Transcription

Mac Tips `n Tricks

HTTP://WWW.VOM.COM/SVCG/
NEWSLETTER
Donating Used
Computer
Equipment
The URL listed is for the
Computer Recycling Center.
All of the info needed (and
then some) is listed on the
site.
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Check out iRecycle!
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iRecycle makes it easy to
find recycling locations
anywhere in the U.S
Mac
Tips ’n Tricks
MAC
NEWSLETTER
SONOMA VALLEY COMPUTER GROUP
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 1
SVCG OFFICERS President
Beth Pickering
[email protected]
Secretary
Kathy Aanestad
[email protected]
Treasurer
Joan Fabian
[email protected]
Newsletter
Kathy Aanestad
[email protected]
Members-at-Large
Chip Allen
[email protected]
Elizabeth Palmer
[email protected]
Dave Bixler
[email protected]
Jeanette Barekman
[email protected]
Dennis Astrubel
SVCG Evangelist Veda Lewis
[email protected]
Webmaster
Kathy Aanestad
[email protected]
Board Meetings: Open to all members.
S.V.C.G. meets second Saturday of each month
at Sonoma Public Library, 755 West Napa
Street; HOURS: Mac: 9AM-10:30AM,
Windows: 10:30AM-noon unless otherwise
notified. Guests Welcome. No Charge.
About this publication
Sonoma Valley Computer Group Newsletter is published monthly by
Sonoma Valley Computer Group. Desktop publishing services donated
by: Kathy Aanestad. Call: (707) 935-6690, email [email protected].
© 2009, SVCG. All rights reserved. Sponsored by our local ISP,
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Mailing Address:
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PO Box 649
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SVCG USER GROUP
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PEACHPIT
See Pg. 3 for info.
O’REILLY
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conferences. Contact
Kathy for the code.
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FEBRUARY 2010
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PAGE 2
MAC USERS —
2010 AGENDA!!
We’re going to take a look at:
• Mac Tips ’n Tricks - see Pg. 5
• iPhoto
• Mail
• iCal
• iDVD
… and MORE!!!
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Member. Membership is free and easy. All you have to do is answer a few, short questions in our
ongoing, online survey, which you can access on any book page. Don't worry, all of your information
is confidential and stays with us--we won't sell it or give it away to anyone. After you've filled out
the survey, you'll save 30% automatically whenever you log on to http://www.peachpit.com as a
member. It's that easy!
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 3
Mac OS X Snow
Leopard: The Missing
Manual
by David Pogue
October 2009
Print: $34.99
Ebook: $27.99
Bundle: $38.49
speed, more polish, more refinement-but still no manual.
Fortunately, David Pogue is back, with the humor and
expertise that have made this the #1 bestselling Mac book
for eight years straight. This one witty, expert guide
makes it all crystal clear.
For a company that promised to "put a pause
on new features," Apple sure has been busythere's barely a feature left untouched in Mac
OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard." There's more
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FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 4
Mac TIPS ’n TRICKS
Did you ever wonder “how did they do that?”
At Saturday’s meeting, we’ll discuss a myriad of Apple OS Tips ‘n Tricks.
Here’s a partial list:
• How to View Long File Names - Expand the column width in Finder to see complete file names
• BCC in Mail - Blind Carbon Copy people in Mail
• Conserving Energy - Put your display to sleep using an active screen corner
• Dragging Files - Create copies and aliases of files while dragging and dropping
• Locking Files - Make sure valuable files aren’t accidentally modified or deleted
• Pictures in Email - You can reduce the size of image from inside Mail
• Finder Path Bar - Ways to find the path to a File or Folder
… and so much more!!
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 5
LAPWORKS LAPTOP DESK 2.0
20% discount on all LapWorks products
ordered by March 31st; share this
discount with family and friends - Just
use coupon code apcug20off
Back in the day when I would slug home
with what seemed to be a 10 pound Toshiba
laptop, I enjoyed the winter warmth of the
computer’s heat when I used it away from my
desk on my lap. In a cold room, it was pleasant.
I know now it was not so good for the
efficiency of the hardware. It wasn’t the most
stable arrangement either.
I unfolded the lightweight laptop desk
(version 2.0) from LapWorks and placed it on
my lap. I put my trusty MacBook atop it. Wow,
I never realized how much heat came from the
machine until the laptop desk intervened
between me and my Mac. I can honestly say
“How cool!”
The
next
thing
that I
noticed
was
that the
grip
surface
on the
LapDesk made the MacBook super stable on
my lap. I actually did a little shimmy back and
forth and the
Mac hardly
moved. It was
nice feeling.
Fully opened,
the desk unit is
about 20 inches
long. That’s
enough real
estate so that I
can place both
hands to the side
of the laptop to
rest if I need to.
If I want to,
there’s enough
room to shift the MacBook to the left of the
desk and place a mouse pad with a mouse. Of
course if I was left-handed, I could just shift it
the other direction and do the same thing.
After an hour or so, I stopped work and folded
the unit trying to guess its weight. The literature
says 1 lb 6 ounces,
but it seemed
lighter. I could see
myself placing it
right into my
computer bag and
heading over to
the library or a
friend’s house to
suck up some
major bandwidth
and be
comfortable in a
cozy chair.
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 6
Ironically,
about a week
before trying
out the
LapDesk I
seriously
considered
buying one of
the full-sized
cushionbacked
laptop desks
I’ve seen at
the local
office supply
store. Three
things
stopped me;
the size (big and they don’t fold), the price,
and the cushions. Okay, the cushions might be
winter warmth, but in summer they would just
be too hot.
For ergonomic variety
on your lap or on a desk,
the LapDesk folds at an
angle and is quite stable.
The rubber grip surface
does it’s job. There are
five different angles to
choose from. When I was
done, I just flipped the
unit closed and it was
ready to pack away for
next time.
Happy Computing,
Veda Lewis
Lapworks is a design and manufacturing
company specializing in laptop
accessories that make working
with a laptop computer safer,
easier and more productive.
Their products improve posture/
ergonomics to help users work
pain-free, reduce heat build-up in
notebooks and protect the users
lap from heat that radiates from
the bottom of laptops. Door
prizes have been provided by the
vendor.
Whether you find
yourself surfing the net
for hours at the local
coffee shop, the public
library, or on your living
room couch, you will find the LapDesk from
LapWorks a partner in your ergonomic and
hardware health.
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 7
iPAD ARRIVES - A TidBits Review
by Adam C. Engst <[email protected]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/10954>
At a media event on 27 January 2010, Apple
announced the iPad, the tablet-sized computing and
communications device that has generated more bits
of industry speculation than any previous product in
memory. Featuring a 9.7-inch display and an optional
keyboard dock, the iPhone OS-based iPad will be
available for prices ranging from $499 to $829,
depending on storage capacity and 3G data capability.
Wi-Fi-only models will go on sale in March 2010,
with Wi-Fi+3G data models following in April.
<http://www.apple.com/ipad/>
<http://images.apple.com/ipad/gallery/images/
hardware-01-20100127.jpg>
During the announcement, Apple CEO
Steve Jobs led up to the revelation of the iPad by
pointing out that there are already two welldefined markets for mobile devices: the
smartphone, which used to be too expensive and
complicated for all but serious business users, and
the laptop, which may offer more than many users
need while having a relatively large form factor.
Jobs noted that any new mobile device has
to fit between those two form factors and must
perform key tasks better than one or the other.
He then pointed out that products in the popular
netbook category fail that test. "The problem is,
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 8
netbooks aren't better at anything," he said, noting
that they're generally slow, have low-quality displays,
and, well, run Windows. The price may be right, but
that's all that's right about netbooks in his opinion.
Apple sees the iPad as sitting between the
iPhone and the MacBook, and competing directly
with - and outshining - the entire netbook category.
Certainly, the iPad's screen looked far better than any
netbook we've seen, and the responsiveness of the
demoed apps was impressive.
(Jeff Carlson and Glenn Fleishman, who were at
the event, wrote about using the device in Hands-on
Impressions of the iPad, 29 January 2010.)
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/10960>
**Apps** -- Based on the iPhone OS, the iPad's
core apps offer similar functionality to their iPhone
equivalents, but have been rewritten to provide
more capable interfaces that take advantage of the
iPad's larger display. Honestly, they're impressive whereas it was always neat how well Apple made
use of the limited display space on the smaller
devices, increasing that display real estate enables
much more fluid interfaces and fewer separate
screens.
iPhone apps run unmodified, either with
pixel-for-pixel accuracy within a black box, or with
a pixel-doubling technique that trades some
crispness to zoom up to the larger size of the iPad
screen. A tiny 1x/2x button appears in the lower
right of the screen in this mode, and tapping it
swaps between the modes instantly, even with
video or animation playing.
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 9
Needless to say, this level of compatibility with
"nearly all" of the 140,000 apps in the App Store is
huge, because it means that not only will the iPad be
useful from the moment it's available, but also that
users accustomed to the iPhone and iPod touch will
be able to continue using their favorite apps.
(Developers must have been overjoyed to know that
good iPad sales wouldn't cause a commensurate drop
in revenue from unmodified programs.)
That said,
apps will be able
to take advantage
of the iPad's
unique screen size
and other
capabilities, and to
that end, the iPad
SDK is available
for download at
Apple's Web site.
Developers have
access to an iPad
emulator on the
Mac, just as they
have an iPhone
emulator.
<http://
www.apple.com/
ipad/sdk/>
Apple
showed not only
the core iPad apps
for browsing the Web, playing music, and flipping
through photos (complete with support for events,
Faces, and Places if syncing with iPhoto), but also a
version of the iWork suite for the iPad: Keynote,
Numbers, and Pages. Each app will be available for
$9.99, so you don't need to buy the suite if you need
only one app. For these apps, Apple had to rewrite
the user interface completely, switching from a
mouse- and keyboard-based interface to the
multitouch approach used by the iPhone OS.
The inclusion of iWork, and the extended time
spent describing its functionality during the
announcement, is a clear nod toward attracting
the business traveler. But the iWork
demonstration raises a number of important
questions and shows some of the potential
limitations of a device that bridges between a
smartphone and a laptop.
Apple didn't address file format or storage
issues, but described the capability to "import"
iWork '09 files,
which could be a
problem for
business users
exchanging files,
especially in
Microsoft Office
format, via email
or cloud services
like Dropbox. It
also remains to be
seen how cloudbased Web apps
like Google Docs,
which are often
unusable on the
iPhone and iPod
touch, will work
on the iPad.
Like Apple's
other iPhone OSbased devices,
there's no support
for Adobe's Flash
in the iPad, which is more glaring, given the iPad's
larger screen, longer battery life, and (presumably)
more capable processor. This is the only gaping
hole in Apple's "the whole Internet" claim, as
some media sites offer Flash-based players for
video or audio. Steve Jobs pointedly showed a
missing Flash movie on the New York Times
home page when using the mobile Safari browser
at one point, to some laughter.
**Publishing** -- Not surprisingly, Apple is
setting the iPad against Amazon's Kindle, both for
reading newspapers and magazines, and for full-
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 10
length books. The New York Times demoed a new
app that attempts to capture the essence of reading a
newspaper, with skimmable pages and the capability
to dive deeper into articles. The app offers the lookand-feel of the New York Times, and features color
pictures and even inline video. We expect to see
similarly rich media apps from other publications as
well.
But more
interesting yet was
Apple's demo of
the iBooks ebook
reader app, which
provides a
Delicious Librarylike bookshelf
interface for
displaying your
books and linking
to an iBookstore
that enables you
to discover,
purchase, and
download ebooks
right on the iPad.
Titles will initially
come from
Penguin, Harper
Collins, Simon &
Schuster,
Macmillan, and Hachette Book Group. No mention
was made of how other publishers - or independent
authors - will be able to get into the iBookstore,
though Apple did say that the iBooks app relied on
the EPUB format. Apple also made no mention of
PDF support, though the iPhone and iPod touch can
handle PDF and various other formats, so it seems
likely that the iPad will have similar capabilities.
Of course, the burning question is how the
iPad will compete with Amazon's Kindle DX, which
costs $489 and beats the iPad in only one respect battery life. Thanks to its E-Ink screen (which is the
same 9.7-inch size as the iPad's), the Kindle DX can
run for a week, even with its Whispernet wireless
connectivity turned on, whereas Apple claims 10-
hour battery life for the iPad. In every other
respect, though, the Kindle falls far short. The
Kindle's screen is grayscale rather than color and
is slow to refresh; the Kindle relies on an awkward
joystick for navigation versus the iPad's
multitouch interface; and the just-announced
"active content" for the Kindle stands no chance
of comparing to the 140,000 apps in Apple's App
Store (see "Amazon Opens Kindle to Developers,
Changes Royalties," 21 January 2010).
<http://
db.tidbits.com/
article/10940>
Amazon's main
consolation is that
the Kindle iPhone
app should work
just as well or
better on the iPad
as on the iPhone
and iPod touch, so
the iPad may help
push ebook sales
through Amazon
for titles that
aren't yet available
on the iBookstore,
or that are less
expensive through Amazon.
**Hardware** -- The basic specs for the iPad
are as follows: It's 0.5 inches (12.7 mm) thick,
weighs 1.5 pounds (680 g), and features a 9.7-inch
IPS display (a type of active-matrix LCD display).
The capacitive multitouch screen offers 1024by-768 resolution at 132 pixels per inch.
<http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/>
Since the iPhone and iPod touch, Apple has
typically shied away from providing detailed
processor specifications, but in this case Jobs did
reveal the iPad is based on Apple's own A4 chip,
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 11
running at 1 GHz. Although it's impossible to
compare directly against the iPhone 3GS's quite
different 600 MHz processor, Jobs said with regard
to the A4, "it screams." We presume that the A4 is
based on technology from P.A. Semi, a fabless
semiconductor company that Apple purchased in
2008. The A4 is not just a CPU, but a full system-ona-chip, including the processor, graphics processor, I/
O handler, and additional core functions.
since all these devices could be used far more
effectively for writing with a keyboard. We suspect
that editing may still be somewhat cumbersome,
given the iPhone OS's interface for copying and
pasting text and lack of drag-and-drop.
Depending on the model, the iPad will come
with 16, 32, or 64
GB of flash
memory for
storing apps and
data - Apple has
not said how
much RAM the
iPad will have for
app execution. All
models will
include 802.11n
Wi-Fi plus
Bluetooth
2.1+EDR. Apple
claims that the
iPad will have a
10-hour battery
life in active use,
though that will
undoubtedly drop depending on network usage, and
the battery will reportedly last 30 days in standby
mode. Other features will be familiar to iPhone users
- an accelerometer, electronic compass, speaker,
microphone, and dock connector.
In the same vein, we're pleased to see that
the Bluetooth
support in the
iPad enables use of
the Bluetooth
Apple Wireless
Keyboard, a
feature that's often
been requested for
the iPhone and
iPod touch.
Unfortunately,
Apple
representatives at
the event, when
asked, said that
Bluetooth
keyboard support
is not currently
planned for the
iPhone and iPod touch.
Jobs was careful to note that the iPad is a good
environmental citizen, being free of arsenic, BFRs,
mercury, and PVC.
Perhaps the most significant hardware-related
announcement was the iPad Keyboard Dock, which
holds the iPad in portrait mode and provides an
Apple aluminum keyboard (with a slightly modified
key layout) that you can use instead of the iPhone
OS's standard virtual keyboard. Although we don't
yet know if the keyboard dock will work with the
iPhone and iPod touch as well, that would be ideal,
<http://images.apple.com/ipad/specs/images/
keyboard_dock_1_20100127.jpg>
<http://www.apple.com/keyboard/>
Other accessories include an iPad Case that
protects the iPad and holds it in a variety of
positions, a small iPad Dock that lets you charge
and sync your iPad to a computer, an iPad USB
Power Adapter that lets you charge your iPad from
a wall outlet, and the iPad Camera Connection
Kit. This final accessory enables you to import
photos and videos from digital cameras either by
connecting them via USB to the iPad, or by
inserting the camera's SD card into the SD Card
Reader. We expect this to be a popular accessory
with travelers looking to offload images from their
digital cameras while on vacation, though many
digital photos from a modern high-megapixel
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 12
camera could overwhelm the iPad's relatively limited
storage space.
Speaking of which, the most notable omission
in the iPad is a camera - it's surprising that Apple
didn't add one, as on the iPhone, for still images and
video, since it seems as though the iPad could be an
ideal video-chat device if the problem of camera
shake could be solved with image stabilization
capabilities. Another part of the problem might be
where to put it, since the back is ideal if your subject
is in front of you, and the front is ideal if you want to
appear in the video yourself; we can imagine Apple
meeting both needs in a clever way in a future device.
**Pricing and
Availability** -Jobs thoroughly
enjoyed discussing
the iPad's pricing,
noting that
industry pundits
(hey, we resemble
that remark!)
thought it would
have to sell for
$999. (We never
said anything of
the sort.) Instead,
the iPad comes in
six different
models, three that
are limited to Wi-Fi
for networking, and three that combine Wi-Fi with
3G cellular data connectivity.
Of course, for the 3G models, you also need
a 3G data plan, which will cost $14.99 for 250 MB
per month, or $29.99 per month for unlimited
data. Both plans are available only through AT&T
in the United States, which will no doubt cause
much consternation among those who dislike
AT&T's coverage and network capabilities. Apple
said the iPad would be available internationally,
but cell data details will undoubtedly vary by
carrier. iPad data subscribers also get free access
to all of AT&T's Wi-Fi hotspots, much as iPhone
users do (for more on this deal and on finding WiFi in general, see "Find Free and Inexpensive WiFi," 23 December 2009). Apparently, all the
rumors about the iPad working with Verizon
Wireless were
wrong.
<http://
db.tidbits.com/
article/10872>
We're pleased
that the data plans
don't require a
contract, meaning
iPad owners with
3G-capable models
can activate this
feature a month at
a time when
they're going to be
traveling, and
needn't pay for a data plan for months when they
and their iPads will mostly be around home, work,
and Wi-Fi-enabled coffee shops.
<http://www.apple.com/ipad/pricing/>
The Wi-Fi models cost $499 (16 GB), $599 (32
GB), and $699 (64 GB), while the Wi-Fi+3G models
are more pricey at $629 (16 GB), $729 (32 GB), and
$829 (64 GB). The Wi-Fi-only models will reportedly
become available in March 2010, with the Wi-Fi+3G
models following a month later in April.
**Padding the Numbers** -- At first glance,
and while we are admittedly still within the
Reality Distortion Field, the iPad looks like a
winner. The hardware looks sufficiently capable,
the use of the iPhone OS means that it will have a
huge app library from day one, and the price is far
more reasonable than many feared.
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 13
Over the course of 10 minutes
determining where to eat in San Francisco,
there were a handful of moments when we
thought an iPad would be better than our
iPhones: searching for restaurants on a map;
jotting a few notes from our conversations
about the device; checking Twitter to see if
anyone we knew had restaurant suggestions;
looking on the Web to see if the first
TidBITS article was online yet; checking
the calendar for our return flight
information.
Many in the Apple world will undoubtedly be
ordering iPads as soon as they're available, but the
real question is if the iPad will continue to extend
Apple's reach to those who didn't previously own a
Mac or an iPhone.
--- read/post comments: <http://db.tidbits.com/
article/10954#comments>
tweet this article: <http://db.tidbits.com/t/
10954>
Hands-on Impressions
of the iPad
by Glenn Fleishman <[email protected]>, Jeff
Carlson <jeff[email protected]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/
10960>
To give you an idea of what it's like to use
Apple's new iPad, we need to jump past Apple's
media event announcing the tablet and go to lunch.
(What can we say? Food and information go hand-inhand in our world, and Glenn was getting faint.)
In each case, nothing about the iPhone
prevented us from doing these things. But
after handling the iPad following Steve
Jobs's announcement, our fingers wanted
more room to type, more of a document-style
grasp of the device instead of cupping it in the
hand, and faster performance. Our still-shiny
iPhone 3GS units suddenly felt small and slow.
The iPad is something to be held and
experienced, because so many of its advantages
are tactile: how it feels in the hand, of course, but
also how the software responds. (Where our
opinions differ, we break them out.)
(For full details about the iPad
announcement and the device's specifications, see
"The iPad Arrives, 27 January 2010.)
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/10954>
**Speed and Smoothness** -- We definitely
noticed the speed. Even after minutes of using the
iPad, the performance was still surprising. Web
pages load in Safari ridiculously fast. Full-screen
video plays as smoothly as it would to a TV set
from a DVD or Blu-ray player - often better than
our experience on some Macs. The animation for
moving between pages in the iBooks app provides
a neat interactive scrolling page-turn effect that
keeps up with the finger if you keep it pressed
against the screen as you move. (You can also
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 14
simply tap the left or right side of the screen to
turn the page.)
Perhaps the best term for how the speed and
smoothness combine is immediacy: there's no wait
for something to happen, and no delay in following
a finger or gesture. Even the seemingly most
complicated and arbitrary activities have the same
fluid sense of something happening in the real, not
virtual world.
For instance, the Photos app on the iPad lets
you see photo groups by albums (and also by
events, Faces, and
Places if you sync
with iPhoto on
the Mac). Use two
fingers on a stack
of photos in the
events view to
stretch the photos
apart and back
together, like you
had just randomly
spread out and
restacked pictures.
No matter how
many times Glenn
did this, it still
seemed
remarkable.
**The Screen** -- Once we found a suitable lunch
spot, we joked about the many "artists' renditions"
of Apple tablets that appeared before the
introduction, because the iPad turns out to be
what we expected from a design standpoint: a large
iPod touch. Most of the front face is a beautiful,
high-resolution color LCD screen. A black bezel
surrounds the 9.7-inch screen to give you
someplace to put your thumbs (otherwise you're
activating the multitouch sensors). The 1024by-768 pixel size is enhanced by its 132 ppi
resolution. Items onscreen are crisp and clear, and
even resized objects such as current iPhone app
icons and upscaled graphics aren't painful to view.
The upscaling of iPhone apps is noticeable
(when you tap the 2x button to fill the screen
instead of running at actual size), especially in
games such as Bejeweled where most everything is
bitmapped. But apps that rely on the iPad's
graphics engine to render resizable items such as
text appeared to cope well. We couldn't tell
whether the operating system is cleanly changing
the size of text or just doing a great job of doubling
the pixel counts, but we suspect the former.
The screen has the same oleophobic
fingerprint-resistant coating as the 3GS, but it
definitely smears up fast. The cheerful and
informative Apple
employees
assisting us in
trying out the iPad
devices would
regularly ask to
clean the screens although that was
to keep them fresh
for the tens of
thousands of
photos being
taken, too.
**Of Transitions
and Polish** -We expect
excellence from Apple when it comes to visual
styling, but the iPad surprised us. Subtle
animations abound, imparting the sense that the
iPad is a single cohesive, consistent design. For
example, tapping an iBook to read it doesn't just
immediately fill the screen with the text. The
"book" opens and moves toward you; it's a very
quick animation, so it doesn't feel like the
designers tacked it on to be cool or burn CPU
cycles. When you switch from portrait to
landscape orientation in the Mail app, the Inbox
list appears as if it were a piece of paper that had
been folded behind the current message.
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 15
Then there are visual cues that work to
integrate the iPad into the real world. When the
keyboard is visible, the F and J keys appear with the
"bumps" typically used as guides for touch typists.
It's silly to put them there, because the screen is a
flat piece of glass, but it makes the keyboard seem
more "real" for people who use keyboards all the
time. Or, consider the List view in the Calendar app.
When viewed in the iPad's landscape orientation, an
event selected from the list appears to the right, and
if you look closely you see little clumps of torn paper
where previous days' entries appear to have been
removed.
comfortable for people who want to bring it to a
couch or on vacation.
**Size and Weight** -- We spent about 30
minutes holding and using an iPad, and came away
with distinctly different feelings about the weight
and heft of the iPad.
Glenn: I worry that the iPad is a bit horsey.
The 1.5-pound weight doesn't sound like much, and I
don't have weak wrists or forearms, but I found it
tiring to hold the iPad in one hand for more than a
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2010-01/
ipad_visual_details.jpg>
few minutes. I'd definitely want to prop it
somewhere. During Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller's
demonstrations, they sat in a chair and propped on a
knee or in a hand supported by a knee.
The surprise comes not just in the level of
detail that Apple has created, but that the company
is adhering to images of physical, real-world objects
to make the iPad experience more believable. It's not
necessary for the iPad's functionality, but it will likely
go a long way toward making the experience more
Jeff: Glenn is criminally insane. Not because he
thinks 1.5 pounds is too heavy, but because he seems
to be envisioning that he'll be holding the iPad at
arm's length for hours at a time. When reading, I
always prop a book on a table, my lap, or other
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 16
surface. Maybe I have minimal muscle mass, but I
don't foresee weight as a problem.
the writing), using the iPad's onscreen keyboard
ensures that the data you input is legible and
searchable.
We both found the curve of the back surface
to be subtle and comfortable in the hand. Unlike
the iPhone or iPod touch, the edges aren't
completely rounded: the back curves up, and then
squares away to create a flat edge around the
device.
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2010-01/
iPad_Notebook_App_Landscape.jpg>
It also feels sturdy, no doubt thanks to the
solid aluminum processes
developed for the
MacBook Air and
MacBook Pro. The glass
screen makes us unwilling
to throw the iPad into a
bag unprotected, but
we're not worried that it
will bend or otherwise feel
flimsy. Cases and
slipcovers will
undoubtedly be available
well before the iPad itself.
**The Handwriting
Is on Some Other
Wall** -- At no point did
we wish we could write on
the iPad with a stylus and
have it recognize our
handwriting. Although
handwriting recognition
has improved significantly
since the days of the
original Newton, it's just not a good computing
input mechanism. Just because you're holding
something that roughly resembles the shape of a
notepad doesn't mean it needs to be treated like
one.
What's funny, though, is that the Notepad
app on the iPad goes to great lengths to _look_
more like a notepad, especially in landscape
orientation.) Instead of asking the iPad to attempt
to decipher swirls and loops (which are nearly
incomprehensible to us, and we're the ones doing
**Minor Nits** -- We did find some
annoyances and outstanding questions, some of
which may be eliminated by the time the shipping
versions appear. It was clear that the software on
the demo models were still being baked; some
features had non-functional controls (like the
search capability
in the iBooks
app), many
preferences were
missing, and
Glenn managed
to crash the iPad
by trying to
access Wi-Fi
network settings.
None of the iPads
on display
included 3G
networking
(which is due to
arrive in April
2010 in the
United States).
The icons on
the home screen
seem too small
and too widely
spaced. Given that
all iPhone app icons must be delivered to Apple at
512 by 512 pixels, we would think the home screen
on the iPad could display more of them and make
better use of the space. The iPhone can hold a 4by-4 grid of icons on each home screen, plus the 4
icons on the home row. In comparison, the iPad
appears to have a 6-by-4 grid, plus only 4 spots on
the home row, but it could easily increase that to
an 8-by-6 grid and 6 spots on the home row.
The iBooks app has a problem with page
numbers. When you change the font size or type
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 17
face, iBooks repaginates the book silently and
without any noticeable slowing of the interface.
However, it makes using page numbers for
academic reference impossible, something about
which fiction readers and most non-fiction readers
won't give a fig. However, we hope Apple will think
more about this before the release, given its
obvious utility for schools and universities. One
suggestion: use a reference edition, perhaps
hardcover, to allow the optional display of absolute
page breaks in that edition.
The iPad works fine in either portrait or
landscape mode, featuring an accelerometer that
detects changes and rotates accordingly. However,
there's only one dock connector, below the Home
button in portrait position. This is sensible from a
feel and production standpoint, but we can
envision many circumstances, from using it with a
keyboard to watching videos, that you'd want to
dock it lengthwise. The optional iPad case lets you
stand it on end, but that prevents you from
connecting a cable - if you don't opt to spring for
the dock - for charging.
The revised Photos app provides better
organization, a better interface, and better
integration with iPhoto in Mac OS X. You can
even import pictures from cameras (using a $29
USB dock adapter) or SD cards (via a $29 dock
card reader). But you seemingly can't organize
photos once imported, nor upload photos en masse
to a storage location, a service like Flickr or
Facebook, or even a MobileMe gallery - it's limited
to just one photo at a time. (You can email
multiple photos simultaneously, but that's hardly
the same thing.) The Flickr app for iPhone OS lets
you upload multiple photos, and third-party apps
will likely fill this gap.
from a camera or SD card using an optional
adapter, we'd like to see some method of exposing
that information.
The room in which we viewed the iPad was
crammed with journalists, so we couldn't tell
whether audio from the built-in speakers was
acceptable. However, there's just one speaker port
on the bottom. Jeff attempted to listen to the
output and noticed that the bass response made
the back of the unit vibrate, so perhaps there's
more oomph than was discernible during the
event. Our suspicion is that you wouldn't want to
rely on the built-in speakers as the main source of
audio when playing music.
(As an amusing side note, photographer Justin
Sullivan captured a shot of Jeff listening to the
iPad, which, in addition to looking as if he's
caressing the device, ran on the front page of the
paper edition of USA Today (PDF), in the Wall
Street Journal, and online at the Huffington Post.)
<http://www.newseum.org/media/tfp_archive/
2010-01-28/pdf/USAT.pdf>
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/28/
ipad-features-what-you-ca_n_439232.html?
slidenumber=gocgkv7J1TQ=&&&&&>
Whether Apple will be successful at selling
the iPad, no one can predict. But the firm has
certainly built a remarkable device, and one that
sets a new bar for mobile device performance, even
if it were to sell just a handful. (Seriously, does
anyone think Apple will sell just a handful given
the $499 price?)
<http://farm5.static.flickr.com/
4026/4309829213_433828bb3a.jpg>
Also, photos currently do not reveal any
metadata, even basic items such as date, title, and
caption (a characteristic shared by the current
version of the iPhone OS). Given the new feature
to use the iPad as a slideshow viewer when docked
(a button on the lock screen enables this mode), as
well as the capability to import photos directly
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 18
Mac Tip of the Week #257
Excerpted from Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard:
Visual QuickStart Guide by Maria Langer
Excerpted from The Little Mac Book, Snow
Leopard Edition by Robin Williams
Guest Account or User Account?
Quick and Easy Spotlight
Searches
Files created or saved to a Guest account user
folder are deleted when the guest logs out. If you
expect a user to log into your computer regularly,
you might find it more convenient to set up a
regular account for that user.
Peachpit Learning Series by Robin Williams and
John Tollett
Avoid Displaying Junk Mail
Some junk mail sends an invisible message back
to its sender as soon as you open it, telling the
despicable junk-mailing scumbag that this is a
working email address. To prevent opening and
displaying that mail at all, get rid of the message
pane. Then, when you click a message to delete it,
it doesn't automatically appear in that pane. When
you want to read a message, double-click the
message to open it in a separate window.
The search capability in every application or
window on the Mac is powered by a built-in
application called Spotlight. In Address Book,
select a person's card. Then hold down the Control
key and click the person's name; you'll get a
contextual menu in which you can choose to
Spotlight that person. Every email message to or
from that person or in which that person is
mentioned will be found, plus every relevant file on
your Mac. In Safari, TextEdit, Preview, or in any
Mail message, Control-click to get a menu that
includes an option to "Search in Spotlight."
Excerpted from The Mac OS X 10.6 Snow
Leopard Pocket Guide by Jeff Carlson
Cut Back on Printer Files
Earlier versions of Mac OS X installed a huge
number of printer support files so you could print
to nearly any printer. However, your Mac probably
interacts with one or two printers at most. When
you're upgrading from Leopard or Tiger to Snow
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 19
Leopard, click the Customize button on the install
screen to access a new option that can really make
a difference. Display the Printer Support options
and choose Printers Used by This Mac to update
only the printer files that exist on your machine.
By contrast, choosing Nearby and Popular Printers
installs over 600MB of printer description files for
common printers and for those found on the
network; choosing All Available Printers adds
800MB of printer files.
Visual QuickStart Guide by Maria Langer
Speedy Spring-Loaded Folders
You can use spring-loaded folders (enabled by
default in the Finder preferences) to work with
folder icons (or stacks) on the Dock. For example,
you can drag a PDF file icon from a Finder window
onto the Applications stack to open it and drop
the file icon onto a compatible application. This
capability is new in Mac OS X 10.6.
Five System
Preference Tweaks
Everyone Should
Know
Make sure you’ve got
these basic OS X options
up your sleeve
by Kirk McElhearn , Macworld.com
Mac OS X’s System Preferences program is the
one-stop shop for customizing many aspects of
your operating system. Open System Preferences
by choosing Apple menu -> System Preferences,
or by clicking on the Dock icon that looks like a
set of gears. Each preference pane is labeled to
give you a clear idea of what type of elements it
lets you change: Appearance, Spotlight,
Displays, Network, and so on. Many of these
preference panes contain settings that can help
you save time and make your computing
experience better or more efficient. Here are five
of my favorites:
1. Hide the Dock
No doubt about it: the Dock is a useful way to
access applications, folders, and files, but it also
takes up a fair amount of space. That can be a
pain, especially if you’re using a laptop. Since
you probably don’t need to see the Dock all the
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 20
time, hide it. Go to the Dock preference pane and
select the Automatically Hide And Show The
Dock option. Now the Dock will remain invisible
until you position your cursor over it. While
you’re in the preference pane, check out the other
Dock options. Here you can change its size,
position, and more. It’s also easy to access these
settings from the Dock itself: just Control-click
on the Dock’s separator to see a contextual menu.
2. Display the date and day of
the week in your menu bar
3. Take control of your
Spotlight searches
Spotlight, OS X’s system-wide search feature,
lets you make certain changes to the way it
provides search results, as well as to the types of
items it searches for. For example, do you really
need fonts to show in your searches? Probably
not. Adjust these settings by opening the
Spotlight preference pane and clicking on the
Search Results tab. If you uncheck any of the
items in the list, Spotlight won’t search for them.
You can drag these items in the order you want.
When you search, the results will display in that
order in the Spotlight menu, which means the
If you’ve got the clock visible in the menu bar,
you might find that just seeing the time isn’t
enough. Go to
the Date &
Time
preference
pane, and then
click on the
Clock tab.
Here, you can
make some
changes:
choose to show
the day of the
week, the date,
AM/PM, and
more. If you
tend to forget
the date or
which day it is,
this can help
you keep track
of time with a
simple glance
at the menu
bar. You’ll also
find a setting
there to have
the clock talk
to you, every
Here I've unchecked items I never search for, and I've re-ordered the list
hour, on the
so that things I do look for wi# appear at the top of my Spotlight results.
hour.
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 21
items you look for most often will appear at the
top.
4. Activate Exposé from a
screen corner
Apple’s Exposé lets you press certain keys to
display all your windows, all windows of the
current application, or to show the Desktop.
These features let you switch windows easily, or
access your Desktop with a single key press.
If you use Exposé often, you can set an “active
screen corner,” or hot corner, to activate this
feature. Open the Exposé & Spaces preference
pane, and then click on the Exposé tab. In the
Active Screen Corners section
you’ll see popup menus that
correspond to the different
corners of your screen. Here you
can set the corners to trigger
Exposé, Dashboard, Desktop, and
other features. When these
corners have features assigned to
them, you need merely move
your cursor to the corner to
activate it. For example, I have
my bottom-left corner set to All
Windows, so I can easily view
my windows and switch among
them without pressing a key. I
have Dashboard set to the
bottom-right corner, so whizzing
my cursor down there shows me
all my widgets.
Lock key—the one just above the Shift key on
the left of the keyboard—and now you have to
go back and erase what you typed and type it
again. What if you could turn off the Caps Lock
key entirely, and never have that happen again?
No problem. Open the Keyboard & Mouse
preference pane, click on the Keyboard tab, then
on click Modifier Keys. Select the Caps Lock
Key menu and choose No Action. Click on OK.
Now, whenever you press the Caps Lock key
accidentally, your Mac will ignore that keypress.
You’ll have to go back to this preference pane to
turn Caps Lock back on again.
Senior contributor Kirk McElhearn writes about
more than just Macs on his blog Kirkville.
5. Disable Caps Lock
You’ve had it happen before:
you’re typing something, and all
of a sudden everything appears in
capital letters. You’ve hit the Caps
Do you find yourself hitting Caps Lock accidenta#y? If so, you can use
the Keyboard & Mouse preference pane to turn this key off.
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 22
Apple reports record
sales, profits for the
holiday season
by Philip Michaels, Macworld.com
Record sales of Macs and iPhones helped power
Apple to its best-ever performance this past
quarter, as the company on Monday reported
record revenue and profits for its fiscal first
quarter of 2010.
For the three-month period ending December 29,
2009, Apple tallied sales of $15.68 billion and a
net quarterly profit of $3.38 billion. That
compares to year-ago figures of $11.88 billion in
sales and $2.26 billion in net quarterly profit.
“We’re extremely pleased
with our recordbreaking performance,
including our 32 percent
in growth in revenue
and 50 percent growth
in net income,” Apple
chief financial officer
Peter Oppenheimer told
analysts during a
Monday afternoon
conference call to
discuss Apple’s quarter
numbers.
Apple’s quarterly
performance translated
to earnings of $3.67 per
share, up 47 percent from the $2.50 per share
that it earned in the year-ago quarter.
If Apple’s year-ago numbers seem off from what
Apple reported last January, it’s because the
company retrospectively adopted the Financial
Accounting Standards Board’s amended
accounting standards during the 2010 first
quarter. Adopting those standards significantly
alters how Apple accounts for certain items—
most significantly iPhone and Apple TV sales.
Previously, Apple had accounted for iPhone and
Apple TV sales on a subscription basis, deferring
revenue and product cost for those products over
24 months. With the new accounting rules, Apple
can recognize revenue and product at time of
sale. The company has restated its results for the
2007, 2008, and 2009 fiscal years to reflect this
change; it filed a form with the Securities and
Exchange Commission Monday listing the
revised quarterly results and will make those
revisions available at its Website page for
investors.
“We believe [the new accounting rules] will
better enable us to recognize the underlying
economics and performance of our business,”
Oppenheimer said.
Mac results
For the 2010 fiscal first quarter, Apple sold 3.36
million Macs, up 33 percent from the 2.5 million
units the company sold in last year’s first quarter.
Oppenheimer noted that the 33-percent yearFEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 23
over-year growth rate outpaced the projections of
market-research firm IDC, which sees the overall
PC market growing at 17 percent.
“We’re shipping the best products in our history,
and customers love them,” Oppenheimer said.
The Mac sales figure sets a new record, topping
the 3.05 million Macs Apple sold during the
fiscal fourth quarter of 2009.
The fall revamp of the iMac line helped boost
desktop sales for the quarter. In October, Apple
replaced its 20- and 24-inch iMacs with new
21.5- and 27-inch configurations of the all-in-one
desktop. Apple sold 1.23 million desktops in its
first quarter of 2010, an increase of nearly 70
percent from the 728,000 desktops it sold a year
ago.
However, portable sales continue to drive the
Mac business. Apple sold just under 2.13 million
laptops during the first quarter—63 percent of all
the Macs it sold during the quarter were
portables.
Oppenheimer credited the October introduction
of the unibody MacBook for helping drive laptop
sales. Portable sales rose 18 percent from the
1.796 million laptops Apple sold in the year-ago
quarter.
The new hardware may have had a role in
sparking sales growth in Apple’s education
segment during the quarter. Overall education
sales for Mac products grew 16 percent from last
year—Apple’s best growth rate in that segment
since before the start of the current recession,
according to chief operating officer Tim Cook.
The K-12 and higher-education channels both
reported record sales for the December quarter.
“Our whole education business is based on really
understanding teaching, learning, and student
achievement, and we think we’re the only tech
company that really gets that,” Cook said.
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 24
iPhone results
iPhone sales reached record heights in the
quarter. Apple sold 8.7 million iPhones in three
months, breaking the record of 7.4 million set in
the previous quarter. More impressive was the
fact that iPhone sales were twice what they were
during the previous year’s first quarter—during
the 2008 holiday quarter Apple sold 4.4 million
iPhones. The sales value of those 8.7 million
iPhones was more than $5.4 billion. The average
selling price of iPhone models was down 5
percent versus the prior year, likely owing to the
existence of the cut-rate $99 iPhone 3G model.
During the quarter, Apple added many new
carriers in several existing countries, including
the UK. The iPhone also became available in
more countries, most notably China. Apple now
sells its phone in 86 countries, Oppenheimer said.
Cook said that Apple had activated more than
200,000 units in China since the end of October,
but that at this time the company was more
“focused on the quality of the point-of-sale and
customer experience” in China, and “prefer[s] to
move slow, because we’re building the brand for
the long term... we’re very focused on the long
term for that market.” Cook said Apple is happy
working with its Chinese wireless partner, China
Unicom.
And the iPhone is “a runaway hit” in Japan,
Cook said, citing statistics that iPhone sales are
four times what they were in the year-ago
quarter, and overall iPhone sales in the AsiaPacific region are five times larger than in the
year-ago quarter.
In response to a question from an analyst, Cook
offered praise for often-criticized U.S. wireless
partner AT&T. “AT&T is a great partner,” he
said. “In the vast majority of locations, we think
iPhone customers are having a great experience...
AT&T has acknowledged that they’re having a
few issues in some cities, and they have plans to
address these. We have personally reviewed these
plans, and we have high confidence [in them].”
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 25
Regarding Apple's acquisition of Quattro
Wireless, a mobile advertising company, Cook
said that Apple "look[s] forward to providing
developers with a great opportunity for
advertising," but that mobile advertising is
currently "in its infancy."
iPod results
Not every product segment saw growth during
the quarter. iPod sales fell 8 percent year-overyear, as Apple sold 21 million music players
during the quarter. However, Oppenheimer
characterized that decline as expected. Indeed,
overall iPod sales growth has been flat for some
time—sales have declined for three consecutive
quarters now.
Still, Apple executives didn’t sound particularly
bothered on Monday by the iPod’s quarterly
performance. The music player continues to gain
market share internationally, and its share of the
U.S. market remains at more than 70 percent,
according to Oppenheimer.
Instead, Apple is choosing to dwell on a strong
performance by its higher-end—and more
expensive—iPod touch. Oppenheimer said Apple
sold 55 percent more iPod touches this year than
it did in the first quarter of 2009. The average
selling price of the iPod increased by 9 percent
during the quarter, driven by sales of the touch.
Oppenheimer told analysts on Monday that the
iTunes Store had enjoyed a “record-breaking
quarter,” though the company provided no
revenue figures for its online retail arm for
music, movies, TV programs, and mobile apps.
Retail and other figures
Apple finished the first quarter with 283 retail
stores, after opening 10 new outlets during the
quarter. Those openings included high-profile
stores near the Louvre in Paris and New York’s
Upper West Side. Apple also remodeld 32 stores
during the quarter, for a total of 100 remodels
during the 2009 calendar year.
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 26
Retail revenue rose 17 percent to $1.97 billion
for the quarter. Average revenue per store was
$7.1 million, up from $7 million in the year-ago
quarter. The brick-and-mortar stores sold a record
680,000 Macs, with half of those sold to
customers who were new to the Mac.
Look for Apple to open between 40 and 50 stores
during the 2010 fiscal year, Oppenheimer said,
with half of those outlets located outside the U.S.
Speaking of international sales, they accounted
for roughly 58 percent of Apple’s revenue for the
quarter.
Even after a quarter that saw Apple buy online
music streaming company Lala, the company
continues to sit on a big pile of cash. Apple’s
cash and short-term investments total $39.8
billion, according to Oppenheimer—that’s up
$5.8 billion from the previous quarter.
Apple’s forecast
Looking ahead to the March quarter,
Oppenheimer told analysts to expect sales
between $11 billion and $11.4 billion. That
compares to restated sales of $9.1 billion for the
fiscal second quarter of 2009. Apple expects
earnings between $2.06 and $2.18 per share for
the upcoming quarter; that compares to $1.79 per
quarter a year ago, after adjusting for the new
accounting rules.
“The new products we are planning to release
this year are very strong, starting this week with
a major new product that we’re really excited
about,” CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement
accompanying Monday’s earnings release.
Jobs was referring to Apple’s Wednesday product
event, where the company is widely expected to
unveil a tablet or similar portable product.
However, analysts looking for a hint of what to
expect out of Monday’s conference call probably
came away disappointed.
“I wouldn’t want to take away your joy of
surprise on Wednesday when you see our latest
creation,” said Cook, deflecting an analyst
question about the January 27 event.
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 27
Google Email
Uploader gets your old
e-mail into Gmail
by Dan Frakes, Macworld.com
Google’s Gmail service offers vast amounts of
storage, a unique approach to organization, one
of the best e-mail-searching features around, and
access to all your e-mail from any Web browser
—all for the low, low price of free. And with a
program such as Mailplane, you can even get
many (though not all) of the niceties of a
dedicated e-mail client.
In fact, some people like Gmail so much that
they’ve moved their old mail—perhaps years and
years of messages filed away in Eudora—into
Gmail, giving them searchable access to their
archives from anywhere. The problem is that
while Gmail makes it easy to import messages
from other Webmail systems (such as Yahoo,
AOL, or Hotmail), and you can import POP email that’s still on your mail provider’s server, it
hasn’t been a simple task to import older
messages already on your computer.
If you’ve got a Google Apps-hosted Gmail
account—not a standard Gmail account,
unfortunately—there’s now an easier solution:
the open-source Google Email Uploader for
Mac. This utility provides a simple process for
uploading your local e-mail to that Gmail
account.
When you launch Google Email Uploader, it
displays any Mail, Eudora, or Thunderbird
mailboxes it finds in their default locations. You
can also manually point the program to messages
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 28
—in Mail mailboxes, mbox files, or maildir
folders—stored elsewhere. Unfortunately, you
can’t upload mail from a Microsoft Exchange
account, even if you access that account in Mail.
Similarly, Entourage isn’t currently supported;
you’ll need to first convert Entourage mail to
one of the supported formats.
You then choose your upload options: whether
or not to preserve message properties (for
example, read/unread, starred, or draft); whether
or not to display the uploaded messages in your
Gmail Inbox, and which labels to assign to
messages. The program can automatically assign
labels corresponding to mailbox names; so, for
example, any e-mail messages in a Family folder
in Mail will have a Family label when uploaded
to Gmail. (Note that if you upload mail
contained in subfolders—for example, in Work:
Project B: January—those messages will get a
separate label for each folder, rather than one
long label.) You can also choose an additional
label, such as today’s date, that will let you
quickly view in Gmail all the messages included
in this upload.
Finally, you provide your Gmail account name
and password and click Upload. Depending on
how many messages you’re uploading, the
process will take anywhere from a few seconds
to a few hours; the Upload Progress screen
displays the progress of the upload, along with
any errors. When the process is finished, the
Skipped Messages screen lets you view each
message that couldn’t be imported, along with
the reason why. (If any of these messages are
important, you can manually forward or redirect
them, using your desktop e-mail client, to your
Gmail account.)
One glitch reported by a user is that if your
Internet connection is interrupted during the
transfer, you must start over, which may result in
duplicate messages; you should be sure you’ve
got a reliable connection before starting. This is
also a good argument for using the Assign
Additional Label option to apply a unique label
to imported messages: If the upload is
interrupted, you can easily delete from Gmail
any messages that were successfully imported,
and then try the upload again.
Google Email Uploader’s biggest limitation is
that, because it currently uses the Google Apps
Email Migration API, it doesn’t work with
standard Gmail accounts; you need Google
Apps-hosted Gmail. Granted, you can set up a
Google Apps account, which includes 50 e-mail
accounts and support for Google Calendar and
Google Docs, for free. But setting up e-mail in
Google Apps isn’t dead-simple, and if you’ve
already got a Gmail account you’ve been using
for a while, chances are you want to keep using
it. Here’s hoping a future version of Google
Email Uploader adds support for standard Gmail
accounts.
People To Remember
Within a few short months of each other, SVCG has lost two members, Tom Schenck and Nina
Podgorny. Nina belonged to the club in the early 90s, but ill-health prevented her from attending
our meetings in later years. You will remember Tom as the ‘gadget guy’! They will be missed.
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 29
http:www.smalldog.com
Unlearn Words
By Matt Klein
We all type words from time to time that spell
check doesn’t recognize. Did you know that you
can teach spell check words it doesn’t know? In
many applications you can right-click on a word
flagged as misspelled and add it to the spell check
dictionary. Just place your cursor over the word,
right-click, and select Learn Spelling. If you’ve
taught the dictionary a new word, but would rather
it un-learn it, you can right-click on the word in
question and select Unlearn Spelling.
backups of most anyone’s Mac or Macs. Today,
Apple sells Time Capsule in 1TB and 2TB
configurations with substantially improved wireless
speed due to compliance with the 802.11n
standard, not just the draft standard.
With current generation iMacs standard
storage starting at 500GB, and more and more
laptops with 500GB and larger drives, 1TB is no
longer enough for everyone. I bought a 500GB
Small Dog Refurbished 500GB Time Capsule and
quickly filled it with backups from my MacBook
Pro. When my girlfriend bought a new iMac to
replace her aging PowerBook running MacOS X
10.4 (Tiger), the added strain of an another Time
Machining Mac made 500GB downright unusable.
I didn’t want to shell out for a whole new Time
Capsule, so I asked Google how to replace the
internal drive in a time capsule. I found an
excellent guide that explained that the server-grade
drive that Apple ships in their Time Capsule is not
entirely necessary, and that an energy-efficient,
lower-RPM drive would put less strain on the
internal power supply and reduce the strain on the
small internal fan. I picked up a 1.5TB 3.5-inch
SATA hard
drive (though
2TB would
work just as
well).
Time Capsule Hard
Drive Upgrades
By David Boyd
Apple’s Time Capsule was released in 2007 in
500GB and 1TB capacities which were, at the
time, sufficiently capacious to accommodate
The first
step is to
remove the
rubbery
bottom of the
time capsule,
which is kept
in place with
some very
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 30
sticky adhesive. Rebecca suggested I use the
original drive for some time to warm the adhesive,
but in the end a heat gun was necessary to cleanly
remove it. This reveals ten phillips screws holding
on the bottom plate, which comes right off. Once
inside, it’s quite obvious how to proceed. Be
careful of the temperature sensor, which must be
removed without damaging its cable. The SATA
power and data cable must be carefully unplugged
from the main board inside.
went phut and I spent much of the day in the
dark.
Once you’ve installed the new drive, button
the Time Capsule back up, and fire up AirPort
Utility, you’ll be guided through the process of
formatting the new drive. All told, the process
took about twenty minutes, but as you probably
know from experience, the initial backup took all
day. Instead of 100GB free, I now have well over
1000GB free – plenty of space for my girlfriend’s
and my backups!
First, you should have an uninterruptible power
supply (or UPS). And it must be robust enough
to handle the devices plugged into it. Fat lot of
good it does you plugging a Mac Pro, laser
printer, and 30-inch monitor into a 350VA UPS.
With such a puny UPS you’ll have just enough
reserve power to utter “damn!” before the battery
drains.
But I was prepared. And you can be too with
these few tips for what to do before and during
those dark hours.
Get the right UPS
Different devices draw different amounts of
power. An old Power Mac G5 sucks more power
than a modern Mac Pro. An iMac pulls less
power than a Mac Pro. And an Apple laptop of
any stripe beats them all. Get a UPS that can
handle your computer’s power pull. You can
have a 1500VA UPS for between $150 and $200.
Tips for weathering
power outages
by Christopher Breen, Macworld.com
As a central-California resident, I’m accustomed
to a couple of flavors of weather—mild and notas-intensely-mild-as-it-was-last-week. Yet this
week we’ve been getting hammered with real,
honest-to-god weather—hail, buckets of rain,
high winds, thunder, lightning, and the
occasional flurry of toads. And, because our
power lines remain above ground—as the early
decades of the 20th century intended—the power
Be smart about what you plug
into that UPS
Clearly you need to jack your computer and its
monitor (if one isn’t built in) into the UPS’s
battery-powered plugs. You should give careful
thought to any additional devices that you attach
to one of these plugs. Remember, a UPS is
providing life-support to your Mac and you want
its charge to last as long as possible. A laser
printer will suck the life out of the most robust
UPS in next to no time, so that’s out. You can
also live without speakers, a second monitor, that
external backup drive, and your lava lamp when
on battery power.
If you have a laptop that you leave plugged in,
feel free to jack it into an outlet that isn’t fed by
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 31
the battery. This outlet can still provide surge
protection, but since your laptop has a battery of
its own, you don’t need the UPS lending
assistance as well. (If you do later, you always
have the option to plug the laptop into a batterypowered outlet.)
If you do have a laptop or iPhone or iPod touch
and rely on the Internet to get things done (and
yes, this can include checking the local power
company’s outage map to see when you might
have your power restored), plug your broadband
modem and wireless router into the UPS. Thanks
to a set-up like this I was able to stay on the
Internet with my laptop and iPhone for three
hours after my power went kablooey.
If bad weather is on the way, attach a key drive to
your Mac and copy to it any documents you need
to work on that day. Should the power go out,
your UPS give up the ghost, and the power
company shrug its shoulders about when you
might get juiced again, you can take that key
drive to a powered-friend’s house and do your
work on their Mac (because, naturally, all your
friends have Macs). Optionally, if you have a
laptop as well as a desktop Mac, transfer those
documents to the laptop.
Back in the old days, we worked on something
called “paper” with “pens” and “pencils.” If your
work allows for this kind of approach, print what
you need and work on hard copy.
Get more than one UPS
During the outage
Speaking of that previous set-up, this was
possible because I have two UPS units. One is
for my Mac Pro and monitor and is there simply
so I have time to wrap up my work before I shut
the things down—my 1500VA APC UPS
provides about 15 minutes of power to these
devices. Another 1250VA APC UPS feeds my
DSL modem and AirPort Extreme Base Station.
Despite having a couple of UPSes, a MacBook
Pro, and an iPhone, eventually my tether to the
outside world was severed. Rather than pout, I
chose to view this as an opportunity to do
something productive with my gear when it could
do nothing else but bend to my will.
Before the outage
Power isn’t perfect and there will come a time
when you’re going to lose your fair share of it.
Before that happens you can do a few simple
things that help ensure you’ll weather the
weather better than you might have.
First, make sure your UPS will hold a charge. If
you’ve had one for a year or more, pull its plug
and see how long it can power the items plugged
into it. If it poops out almost immediately, check
to see what you've plugged into it. If it seems like
it should handle the load better, you may want to
think about replacing its battery.
I started by unplugging everything plugged into it
—which included half a dozen external hard
drive and countless USB and FireWire
peripherals—dumping the gear into one pile and
cables into another, and then sorting through the
piles to see what I really needed to reattach to the
Mac.
It turned out that at least four of the hard drives
were there simply because I hadn’t bothered to
unplug them after transferring their contents to a
more expansive drive. Similarly, I discovered a
Winchester Mystery House collection of cables
—cables that seemed to have some purpose but,
in fact, led nowhere.
After putting those drives aside, I found that I
could consolidate the remaining power plugs into
a single power strip rather than the three strips
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 32
I’d used previously. And since I was dealing with
power, I rechecked the connections I’d made to
the UPS and found that I could eliminate some of
the devices I’d previously plugged into the
battery-powered outlets.
As everything was unplugged from the Mac Pro
anyway, I thought I’d open it up and take a look
around. Eww, dusty! Using a can of compressed
air, I blasted out the gunk, figuring that doing so
would help it run cooler, thus causing the fans to
work less hard, thus giving me a smidgen more
time when the Mac next ran from the UPS.
Apple menu’s Recent Items entry. The category
you zeroed out will be blank, while the other two
will still show your recent activity.
Note that if you’ve enabled the Recent Items
Dock Stack, and you clear the category that that
Stack, the Stack will vanish, but leave an
invisible space behind in its wake. If you click
the empty space, your Dock may restart, but this
won’t do any harm (other than changing your
Desktop picture, if you’ve got it set to rotate).
Thanks to Mac OS X Hints contributor Philip
Rink Jr. for this easy-to-use tip.
My work was done—or, at least, as done as I
could make it. I pulled on a parka, lit an oil lamp,
and thanked the stars above for the mild weather
and reliable power that I typically enjoy.
Clear just one Recent
Items category
by Rob Griffiths, Macworld.com
What is Quick Look?
Instantly preview the contents of your documents
without ever opening them. Flip through
multipage PDFs and Microsoft Office documents,
watch full-screen video, view photo slideshows,
and more. With a single click.
The Recent Items entry in the Apple menu tracks
recently-used applications, documents, and
servers. At the bottom of the menu is an entry to
clear all of your recent activity. But what if you
want a more fine-grained control over removing
entries from these lists? For example, say you
want to remove one or more individual entries.
Christopher Breen explains how to do just that by
editing a plist file (with the help of a free tool).
Between the two extremes of clearing all and
clearing individual items, though, lies a simple
method of clearing one or more categories
(Applications, Documents, or Servers) without
affecting the others. Simply open the Appearance
System Preferences panel, and change the
Number of Recent Items pop-up menu to zero for
the category you wish to clear. Then set it back to
whatever your preferred count is, and check the
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 33
Opening files is so last year.
Quick Look is the innovative technology that
gives you a sneak peek of entire files — even
multiple-page documents and video — without
opening them. All you have to do is select a file
in the Finder and press the Space bar. An elegant
transparent window appears, showing you the
contents of the file instantly. It’s great when
you’re looking for something specific but don’t
have time to open lots of files to find it.
that created it — perfect when a colleague sends
you a document that you couldn’t otherwise
open.
A Quick Look back in time.
You can use Quick Look to your advantage
when you’re searching for files to restore in
Time Machine. Once you locate the file you’re
looking for, use Quick Look to verify its
contents before restoring it to the desktop.
See everything.
View attachments, no detachment.
Quick Look works with nearly every file on your
system, including images, text files, PDF
documents, movies, Keynote presentations, Mail
attachments, and Microsoft Word, Excel, and
PowerPoint files. To see a file in Quick Look,
you simply tap the Space bar or click the Quick
Look icon in the Finder window. You can view
the file in full screen, and you can open the
application that created it with a double-click.
Best of all, Quick Look works even if you don’t
have the application
Quick Look also works in the Mail and iChat
applications in Mac OS X. Say you receive a
message with a bunch of attachments. Instead of
downloading and opening each one, you can use
Quick Look to see them with a click. It’s great
for viewing PDFs, Microsoft Office documents,
and other files. You can even view attached
photos as a slideshow and add them to your
iPhoto library with ease.
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 34
Tip of the Week:
Google and Yahoo
Integration
By Matt Klein
Hundreds of millions use Google and Yahoo for
their email, address book, and calendaring, and
there was no way to integrate these services with
Apple’s iCal and Address Book software. It’s now
very easy under Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard.
To integrate your address book, simply open
Address Book’s preferences from the Address
Book menu on top of your screen. Click on the
Accounts item at the top of the window that pops
open, and then click on the boxes next to the
various synchronization options. Unsurprisingly,
you can sync with MobileMe in addition to Google
and Yahoo.
iCal is configured in a similar way. Select
Preferences from the iCal menu, click on
Accounts, and follow the instructions. You’ll be
asked to specify the account type (CalDAV,
Exchange, Google, or Yahoo).
Of course, making a change in the web interface of
any of these services will result in your iApps
updating themselves on next launch. It works the
other way, just as expected. Google’s web
interfaces tend to be elegant and functional, but
lack the simplicity of iCal and Address Book that I
like so much. This was a very welcome addition to
the operating system, and is just one more reason
to upgrade to Snow Leopard!
SVCG
ROCKS
FEBRUARY 2010
PAGE 35
POB 649
El Verano, CA 95433
Mac Users Newsletter
• FEBRUARY MAC USER GROUP MEETING
Date: Saturday, 2/13/2010
Place: Sonoma Public Library
755 West Napa Street
Time: Mac Users 9 a.m.
Topic: Mac Tips ’n Tricks
for Mac and Windows Users

Mac Tips `n Tricks

Transcription

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