After a bit of Twitter reading, my screen often looks like this:



I haven't taken time to count, but a quick view the Window menu in Safari shows lots of open windows:



I am sure thre are lots of other hidden windows since there are a dozen open applications on my computer.



Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard makes it easy to see the windows associated with any application – just click and hold on the application icon in the dock:



But how do you close all those windows without clicking on all those red dots? Use the Option key! To close all the windows associated with an application, hold down the option key and click one of its windows. It's a fast way to get rid of desktop clutter – and you are still protected from closing items that have not been saved:



Want to learn more about your computer? Book a tutorial session with Dr. Mac Consulting! We have special software that allows us to see and even control your computer. The cost is $60 per hour and we have never heard a dumb question!

--Pat

One of the least-understood things about Snow Leopard is its dropping of support for PowerPC processor-based Macs. Let's take a quick look at the issue.

First of all, let's divide PowerPC into its two components, hardware and software.

Hardware

Over the life of Macintosh computers, there have been three different chip types.

The first Macs used Motorola 680x0 chips. They are also called 68K Macs. These chips were used in the Compact Macs, the Macintosh II series, the Macintosh LCs, 500s, Centris, Quadra, and Performa computer with 3 digit names, and early PowerBook computers. Apple discontinued using this chip in 1996. Mac OS 8.1 was the last operating system that could run on 68K Macs.

The Motorola PowerPC was the next processor line to be used. They were used in a wide variety of computers with these chips were produced from 1996 until August 2006.

Apple introduced the first Intel chip based Mac, the Mac Pro in August of 2006. This line of processors is still in use today and it will be used for the future.

It is the PowerPC (and 68K) hardware that cannot use Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

Software

The other use of PowerPC is its programming code. It is included in many of the applications that you are using on your Mac today. That element of PowerPC is not being dropped in Snow Leopard

When Mac OS X 10.0 was released in March of 2001, Apple included the Classic evironment, – translation software, that allows applications that were compiled for Mac OS 9 to run in Mac OS X. That feature was available until Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard was introduced in March of 2005.

When the Apple moved to the Intel processor from the PowerPC they introduced Rosetta which allowed code written for the PowerPC processor to be run on Intel processors. Although we do not expect Rosetta to be around forever, there are many applications that are still being used that contain PowerPC code. One group of applications that comes to mind is the Adobe CS3 suite. Another is AppleWorks, and still another is Quicken 2006.

How can you tell what kind of applications you have on your computer? The easiest was is to use the System Profiler. The easiest way to get to it is through the More Info… button in About this Mac:

It will look something like this when you open it:

Locate Applications in the left column and click on it:

Notice the scroll bar indicates that there is a lot of the window that is hidden. Use the re-size tab in the lower right corner to drag the window until it is much wider:

You can change the size of columns by dragging on the line in the column header:

You can change the order of columns by clicking on the column title and dragging it to a new location:

You can change the sort by clicking a different column:

You can change the sort order by clicking the small arrow at the right end of the column:

Taking a look at my list of applications, you can see that I have several different types:

My Quicken 2006 is really old in software age. Parts of it will even run on a 68K Mac! I need to replace it, but I am waiting on Intuit to release a new version of Quicken (hopefully Quicken 2010) soon!

Many of my PowerPC applications are parts of Adobe CS3, which I will retire when Adobe CS5 is released. However, scrolling through the list, I have found a number of applications that I will be deleting. Do this cautiously! Make sure that the item you are deleting is a stand-alone application--that is not a part of something like the Adobe CS3 suite!

PowerPC applications run in Rosetta.

Still another kind of application is Universal. These applications contain code to run on both PowerPC Macs and Intel Macs.

These applications include both PowerPC and Intel versions of the code. When a x is present in their Get Info window, tney rely on the Rosetta software. If you have an Intel Mac, you do not want to be running apps using Rosetta.

The last kind of application is Intel. These will only run on Intel Macs. Many of these applications were added when I upgraded to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. These may be are smaller (because they do not contain the code for PowerPC) and many are much faster because they run in 64 bit mode. (I will talk about this in a future blog entry.):

So, do you have to get rid of Classic or PowerPC applications? Not necessarily. My Classic version of Quicken is hidden deep inside the Quicken 2006 package. If I remove it, I might break my ability to run Quicken 2006, so I plan to just leave it alone. I have plenty of room on my hard drive and it takes up only 10.7 MB. The slash through it means that it will not launch on my Intel Mac:

I will be keeping an eye on my PowerPC and Universal applications to see if they have been updated. Over time, developers will release newer versions without the PowerPC code. They will be smaller and they should run faster.

However, in my quest to improve my computer usage, I frequently ask myself--

Am I spending my time working on my computer -- or with my computer?

I have noticed that many computer users spend most of their time tweaking the little things while photos, blogs, movies, email and even work are pushed to the side. Someday all of us will stop using our computers. What will be your legacy? I hope mine includes memoirs, photo albums, movies and projects to pass on to my children and grandchildren! They won't really care how clean or fast my computer was!

If you need some help with your computer -- or help learning to do new things, consider booking a tutorial session with me at Dr. Mac Consulting. The cost is $60 per hour and we will cover just what you want to learn. Give us a call at 408 627-7577 or send us a message at urgentrequest@boblevitus.com.


--Pat

iCalSnow Leopard

Whenever Apple releases a new version (or even an update) to the operating system, all sorts of strange things seem to happen. While some problems can be blamed on a bug in the newest software, other issues occasionally appear, but it is difficult to point to a cause for them.

I have seen several reports that the trash can take forever to empty in Snow Leopard. However, I have not seen it happen on my computers or those of any of the clients of Doctor Mac Consulting.

So, what is causing the problem, and how can you fix it?

When you put a file into the trash and use the empty trash command, your file is not really erased. Instead, the name is removed and the space is marked as available in your hard drive's directory file. The file can be recovered if that area of the hard drive has not had a new file written to it.

Sometimes users want a file to really be deleted. They want to make sure someone cannot easily recover the file. In Mac OS X, there is a Finder command to securely empty the trash.

Since there is an ellipsis at the end of the phrase, a dialog box will appear:

But, just what does Secure Empty Trash do? It writes 1's and 0's over the information in the file eight times. If a file is large, or if there are many items in your trash, that can take a LONG time!

Some people want every file that they throw away to be securely erased. There is a finder preference to do just that:

If the check is present, be prepared to wait--and sometimes wait--and--wait--and--wait!

If you only occasionally want a file to be securely erased follow this procedure:

1. Empty the trash.
2. Place the file to be securely erased into the trash.
3. Use the Finder > Secure Empty Trash… command.

Until just a few years ago, data that was over-written eight times was considered to be unrecoverable, even for government security purposes. However, today they require 32 overwrites for a file to be considered unrecoverable.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard has lots of hidden new features. While there are lots of articles and resources available, some of us learn better with hands-on learning. If you would like a bit more help, consider booking a tutorial session with me at Dr. Mac Consulting. The cost is $60 per hour and we will cover just what you want to learn. Give us a call at 408 627-7577 or send us a message at urgentrequest@boblevitus.com.

--Pat

iCalSnow Leopard

In my last blog post, The Option key does even more in Snow Leopard, I told you about a cool new feature that I found in Mac OS X, 10.6, Snow Leopard.

Since holding down the Option key brought up a whole new Sync menu, I wondered what other secrets might be hidden in the Menu bar. I started with the Spotlight icon:

Without Option key:

With Option key:

There's no change here. Let's try the clock:

Without Option key:

With Option key:

There is no change here either. Maybe I'm on the WRONG track? Let's try one more, the Battery icon.

Without Option key:

With Option key:

Now we are getting somewhere! Holding down the Option key caused the battery condition to be reported. Since I had no idea what might be reported if the condition was not normal, I did a bit of searching. I went to the Apple Support page for Snow Leopard at http://www.apple.com/support/snowleopard/. I entered "Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard battery condition" in the Search Support box:



I was lead to an article, Mac OS X v10.6: About the Battery menu bar extra for portable Macs. You can find it at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3782.

On to the Volume icon:

Without Option key:

With Option key:

This is pretty neat! I can actually change the sound inputs and outputs without opening the Sound Preferences. This can be important if you use a microphone, headphones or an external speaker.

Let't try the AirPort icon:

Without Option key:

With Option key:

This is some seriously cool information. It's a bit geeky, but it will be really helpful in troubleshooting AirPort connection issues.

On to the TimeMachine icon:

Without Option key:

With Option key:

This is an interesting one! I will have to check out this feature. Does that mean I can recover files from other computers on my network that are using different backup drives?

I also checked out Displays, iChat, and Keyboard. The Option key did not cause changes in those.

I have lots more to explore in Snow Leopard, but this is enough for today! I hope you are enjoying Snow Leopard if you have it installed. If you are waiting, just look at all the hidden new features!

Pat

iCalSnow Leopard

My transition to Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard has not been entirely trouble-free. While I await the release of Bob LeVitus new book, Mac OS X Snow Leopard For Dummies, I am doing a bit of searching to find features that have moved in this new version of the Mac OS.

One feature that I use every time I write an entry for this blog is "Start Speaking Text." This useful command means that my computer will read text that I select to me. When I am editing a new post, I will often read over my mistakes. But when the computer is reading the text to me, I can spot errors in what I have typed and I can hear places where what I have written is awkward or unclear. I also use this command to have text from the Internet and emails read to me.

Getting to this feature was not easy in Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard, but I had learned how to get there:

I needed to highlight the text I wanted to have read. Then I needed to go to the "Safari" menu, pull down to "Services," pull out and down to "Speech" and then over and down to "Start Speaking Text."

Imagine my horror when I tried this command in Snow Leopard:

Not only were most of my "Services" missing, but the Services Preferences… were of little help:

Never daunted, I reached for Bob's Mac OS X Snow Leopard For Dummies, only to remember that it is still on the presses!

So I tried the Finder "Help" menu:

It was of little help, so I had to resort to my "Mac logic mode!"

If I were an Apple developer, where would I hide this useful feature?

Ah-ha! Try selecting the text, then holding down the "Control" key to get to the Contextual Menus!

It worked! There it is!

If you have installed Snow Leopard, you will find lots of small, subtle changes. As I read online troubleshooting forums, I am constantly met with rants from Mac users who are upset that something has moved or changed.

Change is not bad--it's just different. If you are a person who is quick to rant and rail at changes, perhaps you need to wait for the flood of books about Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard. But, if you like to "Think Different," if you are excited by change, then go on and make the plunge. There is a lot to like about Apple's newest cat if you can accept the challenge of perhaps being a little on the bleeding edge!

I am spending lots of time learning about the changes in Snow Leopard. If you need a hand, consider booking a tutorial session with us at Dr. Mac, Bob LeVitus Consulting. The cost is $60.00 per hour and we can show you lots of great new features in this new and exciting change to our Macs. You can send us a message at urgentrequest@boblevitus.com or give us a call at 408 627-7577.

--Pat

iCalSnow Leopard

I spent the last week on the Outer Banks of North Carolina with our extended family. Seventeen of us spent 7 days at a beautiful beach house. We swam, played on the beach, did some sight-seeing, ate – and we “computed.”

In taking our family to the beach we packed 6 Mac laptops (and two Windows PCs), 6 iPhones (plus 3 Blackberries and 3 assorted cell phones), a Nintendo Wii, 3 Nintendo DS and at least 4 iPods.

While we did not spend our entire week with the “electrons,” our family was certainly “connected!” Add 11 digital cameras to the mix, and our days were well-recorded.

Taking all those electronic devices to the beach and expecting them to work requires a bit of packing. Since six families were involved, there were a few “forgotten cords, cables, and adapters.

Let’s make a quick checklist to help you pack for your next trip.

Car items

Since everyone traveled to the beach in cars and our trips were at least 5 hours long, power adapters were a necessity. There are lots of different USB power adapters available. If you have multiple phones, iPods or game systems but only one power outlet in the car, consider this one by Belkin. You can plug two devices in at once.

Since this power adapter can be used to plug actual USB cables, it is far more useful that this one that has the iPhone/iPod cable attached

Similar products are available from other companies such as Griffin Technology.

If you need to plug in your Mac laptop, consider a power inverter such as this one from RadioShack. Just plug your laptop in and then use its USB ports to charge your iPhone or iPod.

These devices will also allow you to plug in a camera charger.

If your car has only one power outlet, be sure to check the back seat area for an additional outlet, especially in mini-vans and SUVs.

Computer needs

There are some obvious things to pack when you are traveling with a portable Mac, but adding a few more items can make your computing a bit easier. The length of your trip and your computing plans will help you refine this list.

• an extra power adapter. I keep one power adapter in my computer bag and I pack one in my suitcase. Having a backup power adapter means that I am less likely to forget an adapter if I head out to a coffee shop. It also means that forgetting an adapter in a hotel room is less of a crisis (Don’t forget to put an address label on your power adapter so that hopefully it will be returned if it is misplaced).
• a copy of your latest Mac OS system disk and your most important software. I have a small CD case that contains these discs along with a few blank CDs and DVDs in case I need to copy files
• a USB Flash drive. Even with the blank discs, it is sometimes easier to use one of these tiny portable devices. They are not good choices for backing up photos and files since they can become corrupted if they are not removed properly.
• a portable, self-powered hard drive such as one of these from OWC. I use this drive to back up my computer and to make a backup of the photos I am taking. Remember that you do not have a backup unless the file is stored in two different placesl
• a small mutiple-outlet power strip. These are handy in hotel rooms that don’t have adequate power outlets.
• any video cables you might need to connect your computer to a projector--or a TV that can act as a monitor.
• an Ethernet cable, a FireWire cable and USB cables in the various common types.
• Power mangagement – check out this earlier post for ways to make your computer battery last longer.

Camera needs

A camera without sufficient power and storage space can mean returning home without photos to remember your trip! Consider these items:

• three batteries – one in the camera, one in the case, and one in the charger. If your camera uses a special battery and if you are away from a major city, it is often necessary to order extra batteries by mail.
• extra memory cards – on our trip last week, we had one card that was ruined when the camera was turned off while a video was being written to the card. Another became unusable when it was removed from a card reader before it was ejected. Memory cards are cheap these days--keep plenty of spares!
• a card reader for your computer – connecting your camera to your computer can be very dangerous. The camera is usually out of any protective case, it has cords and straps that are easy to snag, sending the camera crashing to the floor. It’s been a long time since I ruined a camera by dropping it, but I attribute my good fortune to being very conscious of where I place my camera! I am very careful to put it in its case – and I am careful to snap or zip the case shut so that in a trip to the floor, my camera is well-protected.
• the download cable that came with your camera. Even though I seldom use it, I always travel with the cable that came with my camera. If a card is damaged, it can often be read by connecting the camera to a computer. It happened last week – we were able to download some of the images from the unstable card by using the camera cable. Even more important, we were able to reformat the card so that it could be used again.
• a lens cleaning cloth – lenses and filters pick up finger prints very easily. If a lens cloth is not easily available, you see people use a their shirt, a tissue, or something even less desirable to clean their lens.
• a ziploc bag – Cameras and water don’t go well together. I kept a plastic bag in my pocket last week. It helped to protect my camera near the water and I used it when we got caught in a downpour. They are also helpful in dusty situations.

iPhone and iPod devices

These little devices can cause some special issues in traveling. Here are some things to consider:

• are your charging habits going to change? – At home I generally charge my iPhone by plugging it into my computer. However, when I travel I find myself using a wall charger more frequently. If I have a rental car, I will probably plug into the car’s power outlet, but if I am riding in someone else’s car, the power outlet is frequently unavailable, so I use my external battery case more frequently.
• be sure to pack an extra cable in case you misplace one.
• At home – I frequently don’t keep a case on my iPhone. It rests beside my computer on my desk. However, when I am out and about, I like to have some protection. For general use, I tend to use a light plastic case. If my pants or skirt don’t have a pocket, I like to have a case with a hook available so that I can slip my iPhone on my belt. If I am going to be hiking or jogging, I will want my armband. Carrying three or more cases in my luggage is not unusual!
• a ziploc bag – Just like cameras, iPhones water and sand don’t go well together. I frequently tucked my iPhone into the plastic bag in my pocket last week.
• Power Management – check out this earlier post on ways to make iPhone and iPod Touch batteries last longer. This post tells you about the various accessory batteries that are available for iPhones.

I’m off to the mountains of New Mexico this week. I will be spending a few day at a family camp high in the mountains, away from cell towers, electricity, and even running water. Later in the week I will be visiting in Las Vegas NM and giving a day of Macintosh seminars. I’ll also do some private consulting. Since I can work anywhere that I have electricity and the Internet, I will also be answering calls for Bob LeVitus Consulting. Of course, I will be visiting with my brother and sisters too! Aren’t working vacations great!

– Pat

I participated in a presentation for Washington Apple Pi last Saturday. I was a part of a panel on tips and troubleshooting. In preparing for the session, I packed a bag of my favorite computer hardware.

Along with a few other pieces of hardware, I took my favorite portable hard drive and my favorite drive gadget, the NewerTech Voyager Q.

The Voyager sits on my desktop, ready to accept the next bare drive I want to mount. I have quite a collection of external hard drives. They connect to my iMac and they share their files with the other computers we own.

These drives are not my primary backup. Those duties are handled by an Apple Time Capsule. Instead, they are filled with other files that are too large to keep on my internal hard drives. One is filled with the graphics used to do digital scrapbooking and copies of the pages I have made. Another contains the archives of articles, projects, presentations and CDs that I have made over the years. Still another drive is the archive of all the digital photographs and videos that I have taken. In fact, there is a separate library for each year. Another contains the iTunes library that feeds our AppleTV.

Notice the NewerTechVoyager. Inside it and to its left are four additional hard drives. These contain backups of the four drives to the right. Missing from the photo are two additional drives that are stored in our safety deposit box. They are larger capacity drives that also contain a backup of these drives.

If you have outgrown the internal hard drive of your computer, you need to have a system similar to mine. For each external drive, you also need to have a backup drive. If that backup is stored in your home, you also need to have a separate backup that is stored away from your home. It could be in a drawer at the office, in a safety deposit box or at the home of a friend or relative, but it needs to be in a different location than you desk. It protects your data in case of a theft, fire, flood or other natural disaster.

Backing up is expensive. To cut down on the expense, a device like the NewerTech Voyager that allows you to easily mount and use bare drives can save you lots of money--I calculate it at about $70 per case. So, this $99.00 device has saved me over $360 already.

Because I am a consultant, the Voyager is also helpful when I upgrade the drives of local clients. I had a client last week who wanted to put a larger hard drive in his MacBook. He brought me his new, larger hard drive. I attached the Voyager to his computer and I used SuperDuper! to clone his old drive to the new one. Then I swapped the drives. I suggested that he use is old drive to store extra files. To do that, he would either need a case for the drive (notice the two drives to the far left in the photo above) or he would need a Voyager.

No matter how large they make internal drives, eventually, we all need more space. A combination of external drives in cases and a hard drive dock like the Voyager help you keep your data backed up and safe.

If you need some help in planning your external storage and its backups, give us a call at Dr. Mac Consulting. We can help you with plans and purchases to protect all of your valuable data.

Safe computing --

Pat

iCalBacking up

Did you read Part 1?

There can be lots of other problems with Internet connections besides those listed in Part 1. While that article dealt with problems that affect both wired and wireless connections, today we will focus on wireless problems.

Years ago when I bought my first Apple AirPort, no one else around me had a wireless Internet connection. My PC neighbors were amazed that I was able to be on the Internet without having a cable connected. Some of them eventually bought wireless set-ups of their own and they were stunned by the difficulties in setting up their new routers while my AirPort made the task so easy.

After a time things began to get ugly. Instead of being able to “see” one wireless network, I had several to choose from in my AirPort menu item. Soon I began having problems with drops in my AirPort signal strength and sometimes I could not even “see” my own network! Click here to read more...

iCalInternet, Troubleshooting, WiFi

You know the drill.

You launch Safari and all you see is a spinning beach ball. Or you’ve been away from your computer and then you come back to go to a web page. All that you get is a spinning beach ball.

So what is going on?

Why can’t you get that web page?

Did your computer mess up--again? Click here to read more...

iCalInternet, Troubleshooting, WiFi

The latest sales figures from Apple show that more and more people are using a portable computer as their primary machine.

My last four “main” computers have been Apple laptops. I bought a G3 iBook in May of 2001. It was replaced with a 15” PowerBook G4 in the fall of 2003. Then I bought a Core 2 Duo 17” MacBook Pro in late 2006. I recently purchased the new unibody 17” MacBook Pro.

During my years of ownership I have changed from a computer lab environment to being on the road every day and now to working from home.

Each setting required spending at least some time running my computer from the battery instead of from the power adapter. During some days I found myself eeking the last bits of energy out of my battery, so I have learned ways to stretch battery life to its fullest potential.

So how do you make a battery charge last longer? Click here to read more...

iCalMacBook, MacBook Pro, Battery

The emergence of a new star in the Britan’s Got Talent show last weekend has captured the imagination of the entire world. Susan Boyle has won the hearts of fans everywhere and many of us want to share her story with friends and family.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY&fmt=18

There are several ways to capture YouTube videos. While some are geeky and complicated, CosmoPod, an inexpesive software package, makes the task quick and easy. Click here to read more...

iCalSafari, Internet

There is some great information available on the web! Do you to save it for future reference and further study?

I do! I often use that information to learn a new technique. I also use it to prepare presentations for my user group, teach a class, ore even write a blog post.

Most of the information that I save will never be printed out. I will read it on my computer screen. I will want to be able to search the information. I will want the option to add comments or highlighting and I want to preserve the links in the article. I might also want to be able to combine several articles into a single document. Click here to read more...

iCalPDF, Preview

One of the effects of my being a consultant with Bob LeVitus Consulting is that I get a window into the habits of Mac users that most writers never see.

Today brought an interesting email from one of our clients:

Pat, I have made this mistake over and over. When visually looking at your iCal in monthly view, the appointments hug the left side of the date box and (it) is confusing as the date next to the text is the previous day. I can't begin to count the mistakes I had made by looking at appointment and seeing the date next to it (date is right justified). Is there some setting that can either move date to right or appointments to the left. It is visually wrong and quite unlike Apple.

When I take a look at my calendar, it is difficult to see the problem:
Click here to read more...

It’s hard to believe that I have owned my new MacBook Pro 17” for over two weeks now. I had planned to write this update last week, but I had too much going on and I got involved in writing the post about File Sharing.

So what do I think? Was it a wise purchase? Did I choose the right options? Click here to read more...

In my previous blog post I answered a question from a Doctor Mac client regarding strange icons that appear in the Sharing section of the sidebar in Finder windows.

I explained what the icons were--but I did not explain how to get rid of them. I thought about it, but I had spent several days on that post and it was time to get it online. When I publish a post, I usually mention it on Twitter. As I was getting ready to write, this message came up in my Twitter Stream:

What a coincidence! I tweeted this back:

Click here to read more...

The subjects for new posts on MacMousecalls come from many sources. Carl, one of our clients at Bob LeVitus Consulting sent me a screen shot of the sidebar on his Mac, wondering about an odd icon that appeared in the Sharing area:

I have a similar icon:

Click here to read more...

Nicole asked a good question in her recent comment:

Hi Pat,

This is an older post but hopefully you may get this: I see in this post you say that the default for TextEdit's highlighting color for the Find function is yellow.

Well, when I restore to default the color I get is this almost invisible pale blue-gray. Which makes "finding" tend to involve lots of squinting and hunching and glaring at my page. Why won't the default color yellow work as my Find default? I'm on a MacBook 10.4, if that helps. Click here to read more...

At about this time yesterday morning I was delighted when I heard a knock on my door and saw the FedEx truck in front of my home.



My new 17” MacBook Pro had arrived! It was time to begin my new adventure. Click here to read more...

It wasn’t that many years ago when a computer was a nicety instead of a necessity. Of course, that was before the Internet became the center of communications for us.

Think of the changes! Click here to read more...

While there are many things that can cause your Mac to run slowly, this blog entry is aimed at users who have migrated from earlier Macs.

At Bob LeVitus Consulting, we work with many customers. More than a few have been using Macintosh computers for many years. They may have owned four or even more earlier Macs. When they purchase a new computer, they use the Migration Assistant that appears as a part of the set-up process to move their older files and applications to their new computer. Click here to read more...

There is a “magic” key on your Macintosh keyboard. Have you ever seen it? It sits in the bottom row of keys, but it doesn’t say Magic. Instead, it is labeled Option.

While this little key sits quitely between the Control and Command keys, you may not have discovered its hidden powers. Click here to read more...

I was listening to a recent episode of a friend’s podcast earlier this morning. He was discussing Macworld and his experiences there. Unfortunately he had a bit of trouble with his hard drive. I still have not finished listening to the podcast, but I just had to stop to write this blog post. Click here to read more...

My favorite company for iPod and iPhone accessories is Griffin Technology. Since I am not at Macworld this year, I am really missing my annual trip to their booth to look for new items and to take advantage of their special show pricing. I received a Twitter Tweet from a friend who is a product engineer there.
Click here to read more...

I am a real fan of timelines. I frequently find myself making them to keep track of all sorts of things.

Right now, I have one for our family. I have recorded the dates of significant events in our lives. I find this very useful in my project of getting all of our family photos and mementos in order. Many of our early family photos have no dates on them and most are in boxes instead of albums, so as I sort new ones, I find myself adding lots of dates to my timeline. Click here to read more...

After ten years and 14 Macworlds, I am sitting this one out. I am at home, cuddled in warm clothes, recovering from the first cold I have had in two years. I seldom get them, but when I do, I seem to get every possible effect. I lost my voice yesterday and today I can barely squeak.

Missing a Macworld is difficult on many levels. It’s not just about missing the keynote and the Apple booth--in fact in the scope of Macworld, those are pretty minor. Macworld is really about fourthings, the people, the training, the products and the networking.
Click here to read more...

December 2???

Where did the year go? Have you started your Christmas card list? Would you like to print the envelopes out easily?

Getting ready to send out the cards can be a lot easier if you spend some time getting ready, then use your computer and printer to streamline the process.

The first task is to clean up your address book a bit.
Click here to read more...

Far too many of us learned to format our writing using paper and a pencil. Remember learning to write in kindergarten – or maybe first grade? My teacher taught us to put our index finger at the left border of the paper, then to start writing beside it.

When I took typing in high school, my teacher told us it press the space bar 5 times, and then begin typing. If we were using one of the fancier typewriters, there might be a tab key. It automatically skipped forward five spaces… Click here to read more...

I do my best and most consistent blogging if I write my entry before I begin my day. This morning I was reading the latest TidBITS Talk messages and today’s topic was the question posed in the first message I read:

I have been asked that same question several times in the past few days, so I know some of you probably have had the same problem. And even if you knew the answer, it is pretty easy to forget some of the tiniest details of the Mac OS X interface.

Do you see that tiny little “jellybean” in the upper right corner of the window above? That little tiny icon is the source of the problem! Click it and the toolbar is gone – just gone! Click it again and the missing icons will quickly reappear. But if it has been a while since you accidentally clicked that jelly bean, it can sure make simple tasks difficult!

Of course, not every window has a toolbar at the top. If there is no toolbar, there is no jellybean:

Here are some other windows with toolbars and jelly beans. This one is Pages:

This is Word 2008:

Even more interesting is the Finder window. When you click the jellybean, the left sidebar also disappears:

Next time the icons are “just gone,” remember the jellybean!

Pat

There has been a search function in iCal since it was released. It works by typing in a few letters that are in the title of the event into the search area at the top of the iCal window. You will then see a list of events with those letters in their title at the bottom of the window.

But, how can you make a list of events from one or more calendars?

First you need to select the specific calendar (or multiple calendars) by selecting them. You can show or hide calendars events by checking or unchecking the box by the calendar’s name.

Now, if you want a list of events, how do you get that?…
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Okay – I will admit it – I am not a member of the under 20 crowd, I am not a member of the under 30 crowd, I am not a member of the under 40 crowd. But that is as far as I will go.

My five children fall into some of those age groups, and they are much more likely to embrace new technologies a bit more quickly than I do. However, being a technologist means that I have to stay current to help you.

One of the newer things is text messaging. Everyone under 30 seems to just get it, and those over 50 probably need a little help in figuring this one out.

Three of my children don’t have land line telephones. Their cell phone is the only way to reach them. They also attend lots of meetings and appointments when having their telephone ring is not appropriate… Click here to read more...

Recently I have taken part in several online discussions about MacBooks and MacBook Pros and just what to set them on.

In each discussion, various objects and surfaces have been suggested as the perfect thing to keep under a portable computer. Notice I did not call them laptops. These days Apple and most other manufacturers call them portables. They get to hot to comfortably rest them on your lap!

There were lots of suggestions for different articles to place under the computer. One gentleman suggested placing the computer directly on a wooden desk and rationalized that the desktop would act as a heat sink. Another woman said she uses her MacBook sleeve, made out of wetsuit material, to protect her legs from the heat. Another person said they use a thick coffee table book. All of these suggestions are BAD ones!…
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Isn’t the web wonderful? What did we do without it? I know that I spend far less time in the library looking for information--and I spend far less money and use far less space since I don’t have to rely on photocopies to keep information.

There are many ways to capture and store information from the web. For example, if I go to a recipe site on the web I can use their tools to store my flies on their website. However, I vist too may sites to find this an effective method of storing recipes!…
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In my last blog post, I explained where paper sizes are stored and gave you an exhaustive list of papers and envelopes along with their sizes. That post took forever to write since I had to make sure that all of the sizes were expressed in decimals.

I hope you checked out a few print dialog boxes. If you did, you probably found that there are lots of papers and sizes that were listed, but your applications did not have them in their list…
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Paper and envelope sizes confuse me! While I know that US letter paper is 8.5 x 11”, and US Legal paper is 8.5 x 14”, that is only the start of the sizes that can appear in a print dialog box. Of course, just where to select a paper size in a Macintosh application is also undergoing changes. In TextEdit, paper size is selected in File -> Page Setup. The size choice will look similar to this if you have not selected a specific printer:…

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I am always looking for ways to learn about new programs for my Macintosh, but I want the training to be reasonably priced. While Apple provides training on Apple products in the stores and Lynda.com provides training on Apple and Adobe products, where do you go to find training on software and web services such as Evernote, TextExpander, and Fluid. Even more difficult, were can you find information about how to expand the capabilities of your AppleTV with ATV Flash?

Don McAllister creates weekly videos on these programs and a lot more at ScreenCastsOnline. His programs are well-done and easy to follow. While there is a free edition of his programs, the videos offered with a membership to ScreenCastsOnline offers so much more! The videos are larger in size, sometimes offer extra content, and there are members-only shows. Click here to read more...

Just what is the problem? You’d think Apple Inc. could make a program for the Mac without any bugs! What are those coders up to! Yeah, yeah, yeah – its all Apple’s fault!

Now, wait just a darn minute! Are you sure some of the blame isn’t yours?

I have been getting lots of calls about Macs not working as they should. These are the same kinds of problems that I saw at about the same time last year – and the year before – and the year before.

I am hearing about Time Machine backups that fail, computers that are having hard drive catalog errors, and programs that suddenly quit. When I run Disk Utility First Aid on the drives, I am seeing lots of errors. I haven’t seen this many hard drive errors since early last fall. In fact, I have even had trouble with my own computers.
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There are lot of good sources of Mac information and there are some people who you come to trust and respect. The crew over at Macworld produce an outstanding web site and magazine and Dan Frakes, who joined the staff in recent years, is one of the people I regard as a true Mac expert.

The July issue of Macworld magazine has a series of very good troubleshooting articles. Much of the content has also been made available on the web site. Dan Frake’s article, Five Mac maintenance myths has brought quite a few comments. In reading them, I was compelled to add my own. This is what I wrote: Click here to read more...

We have a new client. He bought a new iMac and somehow, the person who helped him install his new computer managed not to move any of his files or old applications such as AppleWorks.

That technician should be drawn and quartered! There are always things that need to be moved to a new computer and leaving a client without his "past" is cruel and heartless!

One of the things this gentleman is missing are his templates as they were called in AppleWorks or his stationary pads, as they are called in Mac OS X.

Are you still using AppleWorks? It will run in Mac OS X Leopard, but it is so ancient that it is probably past time to put it out to pasture. It must be run in Rosetta these days, and that makes your newer computer work much harder. Newer products take advantage of the features built into Mac OS X such as the ability to search a document using Spotlight and to view a document in the finder without opening the application itself. Applications that run natively in Mac OS X use common interface elements such as FontBook and the ColorPicker as well as Inspectors which make it much simpler to use advanced commands and features. Click here to read more...

Darn, this getting older is not much fun! Back when I turned 40, I began to notice that small type was getting harder and harder to read. That was just a few years ago, but sometimes I land on a web page that must have been produced by someone with unbelievable visual acuity!

Sometimes it is not the whole site, but just a particular section: Click here to read more...

One of the listservs that I read each day is the MacRogues On-Line Mac User Group and OS X DISCUSSION LIST. I while occasionally provide an answer, I am often frustrated that the all-text listserv format does not make it easy to "show" someone how to fix a problem. The topic that caused me to want to "show" the answer this time is the problem of screen flashing on Macs.

The message writer said "The screen will freeze before flashing a solid blue and then return to normal." Several people responded, most suggesting a hardware problem. Click here to read more...

It is always fun when Bob LeVitus comes to Washington DC. This year he will be doing two days of seminars for my user group, Washington Apple Pi.

These seminars will be much like attending his seminars at Macworld Expo, except the price is MUCH cheaper!
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Running a consulting business with my friend, Bob "Dr. Mac" LeVitus, can lead to a few strange nights! Since I live in the eastern time zone, our friends in the Pacific time zone are just getting to their personal computers about the time that I am getting ready for bed! Of course, since our Skype telephone number has a 408 area code, it can really confuse everyone!

The truth is that I may head up the stairs around 10 in the evening, but that does not mean that I put away my computer till a few hours later. I just love the convenience of a MacBook Pro, a good wireless network and Skype! I do some of my best reading and writing curled up in my bed. Of course, my husband is totally tied to paper, but who needs to hold paper to read and write these days! Click here to read more...

Don McAllister of ScreenCastsOnline stays very busy producing his weekly screencast. Last week's episode was a tutorial on VectorDesigner, a piece of software included in the January MacHeist bundle. I bought the bundle, downloaded the software and filed away my new serial numbers, then got busy with all of my current projects.

I own Adobe Illustrator. I can't say I use it much, but I occasionally work with a client who needs help and I can usually figure out what is wrong or I can point them to a good resource for help. The learning curve for Illustrator is so steep, that I just never use it for my own projects. Click here to read more...

There is nothing that causes more debate in a roomful of Macintosh geeks that the topic of hard drive defragmentation!

The most interesting part is that you can almost divide the room into the anti-defragging group vs. the "you must defrag" group based on the color of their hair!

Now just wait a minute--before you begin thinking age discrimination, you need to know that not all of us gray-haired people people are in the defrag camp, it is just that there are way too many of us there. Click here to read more...

Back in elementary school, we learned to write dates by putting the month, then the day, then the year. That date form works just fine for things like letters, and although it was a little inconvenient, it works just fine for hand-sorting things like checks. But it is terrible for sorting things by date on a computer.

While many things can best be sorted by a title, many items that we store on our computer work best by date. For example, each time I buy something on the Internet, pay a bill, or receive a password, I make a pdf of the document and store them is a folder that I call Passwords and Receipts.
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I am so old that back when I was in high school learning to type, a computer took up a whole room. To type a school paper you used a typewriter, a device that many of today's children may never have seen).

Much of a typing class was spent learning how to lay out a document. Students learned the rules for spacing, paragraph format and page layout. Times have changed with the use of computers and word processing software, but many of the old-time rules are still used. Unfortunately those rules help to produce documents that are impossible to correctly format in a modern word processor. I will take a look at some of those old rules over the next few blog entries and show you the current way to handle text in a wide variety of applications.

We will begin with spacing after punctuation marks such as periods, colons and semicolons.

Back in the days of typewriters, most had a "well" of bars that contained the letters. Click here for a picture. Each of these bars were the same width and so all letters produced by the typewriter were the same width. The font produced by using the typewriter is called a monospace font today. Here is a example of what type would have look like along with the same line in a proportional font Click here to read more...

One of the really nice features of Mac OS X is the system-wide dictionary that is available in all applications that are written in Cocoa, Apple Inc.'s programming environment for programming.

For you, the end user it means that when you make a spelling error, the same database is used to check the spelling of a word. This means when you add a word to your user dictionary in an application such as Mail, that same user dictionary is used to check the spelling of the same word in TextEdit, Pages, Keynote and a wide variety of third party applications.

For example, each time I type my last name, Fauquet, it is underlined with red dots as shown in the illustration below. Click here to read more...

Don't you just hate it – you get an email with a link – maybe lots of links. You decide to visit them, but some of them just don't work.

There are several things that can cause a link to break: Click here to read more...

Remember the good old days? Computer screens were no bigger than 640 x 480 pixels, we generally had only one window open, our eyes were better!

NOT!

I couldn't do without my 17'" MacBook Pro with a screen resolution of 1680 x 1050. I love having that 20 HDTV that connects to my computer and functions as a second monitor. I don't know how I could work if I could only use one program at a time, but I hate not being able to find that little tiny arrow that is my cursor. It gets lost among the windows and among photos of the grandchildren that are my frequent finder backgrounds.

I give lots of presentations from my computer and being able to locate my cursor needs to be easy and effortless. My favorite cursor locator is a freeware application, Mouse Locator from 2Point5Fish.com. Whenever Mouse Locator pops up during a presentation I am sure to get several questions regarding exactly what that neat "thing" is that appeared on my screen. Click here to read more...

Font lists that are too long case frequent call from Macintosh users who like to keep things simple. While designers and graphic artists love having lots of fonts to choose from, many Mac users are dismayed at the length of their font list.

Over the years we have received many calls from clients who decided to take the matter into their own hand and suddenly their computer or their favorite application will no longer work. This is not a good situation. It requires doing an archive and install of the operating system to correct the problem. If an application such is Microsoft word begins acting strangely, you will need to re-install it.

So just which fonts are needed?
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We are back to the email that we received at Bob LeVitus Consulting over the weekend. John asked how to change the label on an icon. In the previous entry, I explained all about changing icon names. But, perhaps, that was not the real question.

Back in the days of Mac OS 9, there was a feature that allowed the user to add a color label to icons of folders, documents, and even applications. While they make your screen more colorful, they can also be very useful in making items stand out. While this feature was missing in the earliest versions of Mac OS X, it was eventually re-introduced. Click here to read more...

Over the weekend we received an interesting inquiry at Bob LeVitus Consulting. John (not his real name) asked how to change the label on the icon for a flash drive.

The question is an interesting one. It is not totally clear to me exactly what is being asked. While icons can have labels, I suspect John was asking how to change the name of the drive. Just in case, I will also talk about icon labels at the end of this entry.

If you want to change the name of a drive or a folder or even a file, there are several ways to do this. The most obvious is to click and hold on the name with your mouse. Of course there are several "states" that the icon name could be in.
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As a Macintosh user, it is not uncommon for me to have dozens of windows open on my computer. I usually have several Finder windows open so that I can copy files between different folders and hard drives. I probably have two or three different Safari windows, at least a couple in Mail, my Address Book, iCal, and at least a couple of windows open for any application that I am using.

Trying to get to the desktop can be a daunting task. With the advent of Mac OS 10.3, Apple Inc. introduced Expose´. Suddenly pressing one key (F11) cleared away all the window and let me get to the files on my desktop!
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We have had several calls in the past week in which the client cannot boot their computer after a crash. When they use their System CD to restart their computer and run Disk Utility, they are met with the message that their disk catalog is corrupted and it cannot be repaired. So what is going on? How can a drive that was working suddenly just stop working?

When they call and we begin unraveling their problem, some will tell us that they were downloading a huge file from the Internet. Others will recount that they had been seeing a message that indicated that their startup drive was almost full, but they did not know what to do, so they ignored it or they were waiting to call us in the morning. What should they have done? When is a hard drive too full?
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Have you ever wanted to find a particular file on the Internet? You might be looking for a specific music file, pdf, or photo. Normal Google searches show you web pages. This tip will allow you to search for directories with specific files.

The type of search we are going to perform is one using the "intitle:" query. And for our example, we are going to search for the song "Happy Birthday."

Our search query will look like this:

intitle:"index.of" (mp3|aac|mp4)happy.birthday -html -htm -php

Of course, each space or lack of space is VERY important, so let's take it apart.
Click here to read more...

Are you a gamer?

I am NOT -- except, sometimes. We bought our first Atari game system around 1979. That was definitely not my thing, though my husband and children loved it! It has been followed over the years by many other game systems, few of which ever caught my attention. Somehow, I am not into first person shooters and the other styles of games that are on most gaming consoles don't do much for me.

However, on my computer, I do have a folder of games. They tend to be be puzzle, word and card games. Over the years, I have learned the importance of games in working with computer users, particularly older users. We must train our eyes to see details such as links and buttons on web pages, icons and words in application menus and small details in general on the computer screen. Click here to read more...