Aoraki Macintosh User Group Home Page

Snippets from Previous Meetings

Laptop Resetting:

The September Minutes described the resetting of the PowerBook and iBook laptop Power Management Unit (PMU) to resolve anomalies and increase stability —a similar process also applies to MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops (manufactured since February 2006), in which the unit is called the System Management Controller (SMC). Information about the SMC and instructions on how to reset it can be found in the following Support document on the Apple website:

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Several computing queries and suggested solutions included:

BROADBAND DOWNLOAD TIME

Why does it sometimes take a long time for downloads to come through, even on Broadband?

Several factors may influence the rate at which downloads arrive:

• the time of day affects the amount of traffic the local Internet is handling — avoid mid-morning (businesses!), late afternoon (schoolkids!) and evenings (everybody else!). For large downloads optimum times may be early morning, late evening or through the night.
• the local phone line through which your Broadband is connected may not handle high speed downloads. To test your connection speed visit http://www.testmyspeed.co.nz/ or http://www.nzdsl.co.nz/module-Speedtest.phtml
• the server which is delivering the download may be busy or overloaded. Try again at another time.

MAIL ATTACHMENTS

Why does my e-mail application sometimes refuse to send certain messages with attachments?

• Sometimes the structure of an a-mail message may become corrupt, possibly caused by adding the attachment — the application may refuse to send the message, or sometimes it quits completely! A solution which often works is to open a new message, then copy the contents of the faulty message into the new one, remembering to add the attachments if necessary.

UNWANTED FILES

Some files seem to have nine lives and refuse to delete. How can I zap them?

• Some applications appear to create files which may only be deleted from within the application, rather that from the Finder. Check also that you are deleting the actual file, not an alias (which is recognisable by a curved arrow at the lower left of the file's icon), and also ensure that the file isn't locked (look for a padlock on the icon), or you can trash it but not empty it from the Trash — go to File/Get Info to unlock a file.

USER NAME

How do I make my name appear in the Menu Bar?

• The name which appears near the right-hand end of the menu bar shows which User Account is currently logged in:

If your computer is set up with multiple accounts (ie. for more than one user), you can switch between users by clicking on the name and selecting the account you want to switch to. This is called Fast User Switching. To turn this facility on, you need to:

1. Under the Apple Menu, go to System Preferences and click Accounts.
2. Click on Login Options (if this is greyed out, you may have to Authenticate first, and type in your password).
3. Click the checkbox by Enable Fast User Switching.
4. By View As, you can select from the menu how you want your name to appear: as Name, Short Name, or as the Account icon:

SESSIONS

MacBASICS

CD BURNING

Jenny and Sheryl gave an overview of some procedures which may be used to burn CDs and DVDs:

If your computer has a Combo drive, you can burn files onto CDs. If your computer has a SuperDrive, you can burn files on CDs and DVDs. Both procedures may be performed either through the MacÕs Finder, or within applications, or by using third-party applications such as Toast.

BURNING FROM THE FINDER

Finder Help outlines the basic procedure (and explains the Alias issue discussed at the meeting):

After you drag items to the disc, the Finder places aliases to them in the disc's window. When you burn the disc, the original files that the aliases point to are burned to the disc. In addition, if any folder in the burn folder contains aliases, the original files for those aliases are burned to the disc as well.

1. Insert a blank disc into the optical drive of your computer.
   If you see a dialog, you can choose an action from the pop-up menu and select ‘Make this action the default ’ if you want the same thing to happen every time you insert a blank disc.
   The disc appears on your desktop.
2. Double-click the disc to open it, and drag the files and folders you want on it to its window.
   The Finder places aliases to the files in the disc's window. The original files are not moved or deleted.
3. Arrange and rename the files exactly as you want them.
   When burning the disc, the Finder gives the items on the disc the same names and locations as the aliases in the disc window.
   After the disc is burned, you cannot change them.
4. Choose File > Burn Disc, and follow the instructions.
   The files that the aliases point to are burned to the disc. In addition, if any folder you copied contains aliases, the original files for those aliases are burned to the disc as well.

BURNING FROM APPLICATIONS

Jenny demonstrated how she uses iTunes to burn downloaded podcasts to rewritable CD so that she can listen to them on her CD player. The process:

1. Create a playlist containing the tracks to be recorded. Click on it to select it.
2. Insert a CD.
3. Go to File Menu and select Burn Playlist to Disc. It takes about 4 minutes to burn 3 hours of audio.
4. Delete the Burn Playlist, and also the podcasts from the iTunes Library: this can be easily done by allocating a temporary rating (eg. 1 star) to each track when it's downloaded, then after recording sort the Library by rating (Apple J displays the view options), select the 1-star tracks and delete them.

A similar process is used in iPhoto to burn images to CD: In iPhoto '08:

1. Create an album containing the photos to be recorded. Click on it to select it.
2. Insert a CD.
3. Go to Share Menu and select Burn.
4. Delete the album from the source list.

Be aware that the above process creates a CD which can be used in another Mac which also has iPhoto. If you want a CD of photos which can be used on a PC, then:

1. Create a Burn folder on the Desktop (Shift-Apple-N to create a folder, then rename it).
2. Select the album (or individual photos) to be recorded
3. Go to File Menu and select Export.
4. Choose the Burn Folder as the export destination. If you have renamed the photos from the original filenames that the camera gave them, choose Use Title. Copies of the files are placed in the Burn Folder.
5. Insert a CD.
6. Drag the Burn Folder icon onto the CD icon, then eject the CD (to initiate the burn).
7. Trash the Burn Folder.

USING DISK UTILITY

Jenny also showed how to use the Disk Utility application (found in the Applications/Utilities folder — from the Finder type Shift-Apple-U to open the Utilities folder) to erase rewritable discs, and also to copy from one disc to another (ie. duplicate discs):

Erasing CD-RW and DVD-RW Discs

From Disk Utility Help:

Before you can reuse a CD-RW or DVD-RW disc, you must erase it. You can use Disk Utility to erase CD-RW and DVD-RW discs.

When you erase the disc, you can select Quick Erase. If you do, Disk Utility prepares the disc so that you can write over the existing data but it doesn't actually erase the data. If you don't select Quick Erase, Disk Utility overwrites the entire disc with zeros, which takes longer.

1. Insert the disc in the optical drive of your computer.
2. Open Disk Utility, located in Applications/Utilities.
3. Select the disc in the column on the left and click Erase.
4. Select Quick Erase if you don't want to overwrite the old contents with zeros.
5. Click Erase.

Duplicating CDs

Disk Utility can be used to duplicate CDs. Insert the CD to be copied and select New Image — the data on the original CD will be copied, encrypted, then burned onto the destination CD. See Disk Utility Help for details of this procedure.

Thank you Jenny, Sheryl, and others who contributed to this Basics session.

DISK? DISC?

Wondered why both spellings are used (as above)?

In general use, disk is American spelling and disc is British, although there is both overlap and variation between them.

However, in computer parlance (according to Wikipedia ), disk refers to magnetic recording media, such as hard disk (hard drive) floppy disk and RAM disk. Disc is used for audio and video recording media (and also for data), like CDs and DVDs.

RSS FEEDS

Ricky explained the basics of RSS Feeds: some computer users like to keep up with the latest announcements from their favourite websites, or with blogs and other on-line discussions. To facilitate this, many websites incorporate Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds which either summarise the update content or link to associated sites containing the documents.

Websites indicate that they have RSS feeds by including ‘RSS ’ button at the right-hand end of the URL (website address) panel, or by displaying Firefox's orange radio-wave icon:

Clicking on the RSS icon takes you to the website's link summary page, eg. The Apple RSS ‘Hot News’ page:

Mary demonstrated how you can keep up to date with a number of websites and/or weblogs (‘blogs’) by using an RSS news reader application such as NetNewsWire. This has a panel interface similar to an e-mail application, and enables you to simply and quickly connect to your favourite sites or blogs:

NetNewsWire Lite is a free basic version (6.4MB download), whereas the fully-featured version costs $US29.95. You need to be using MacOS 10.3.9> to run this application.
Visit http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/NetNewsWire/Default.aspx for further information and downloads.

Thank you Ricky and Mary for this joint session.

APPLICATIONS

GUIDE TO LEOPARD (MacOS 10.5)

MacOS 10.5, Apple's latest (and most extensive) Operating System upgrade, was released on the day of the meeting - at 6pm in NZ. Barry had downloaded the Guided Tour to Leopard video from the Apple website, and this was played to members to conclude the meeting.

Principal innovations of the new Operating System were demonstrated on the video, including:

• Desktop: the 3D-effect Dock, Stacks with their fan and grid displays.
• Finder Features: windows with drop shadows, uniform displays, Coverflow (as in iTunes) views.
• Spotlight: enhanced search facility.
• Quick Look: scroll through files and scan their contents without opening either the files or their applications.
• Time Machine: instant, automatic, continuous backup.
• Spaces: division of the Desktop into dedicated working areas.
• Apple Mail: e-mail enhancements with inbuilt Notes, stationery templates and data detectors.
• iChat Theatre: video chat with bells and whistles!
• etc, etc, etc....

MacOS X Leopard retails for $NZ199 for a single user, or $NZ299 for a family pack. To view the Guided Tour and for further details, visit the Apple Website: http://www.apple.com/macosx/

Barry also shared an article entitled ‘Preparing Your Mac for Leopard’, which summarised some useful procedures for preparing for a system upgrade, eg. Delete unwanted applications, clean caches,tidy up document files, and above all — BACK UP your computer before doing any installing!

Thank you Barry for downloading and presenting this video tour.

NOTE: Be aware that Classic applications (ie. MacOS 9 and earlier) will no longer work if you upgrade to Leopard — they didn't anyway on Intel Macs (unless you had an emulator such as SheepShaver), but neither will they run on Power PC Macs, which previously supported Classic, if you install Leopard!

I have Leopard installed on my school MacBook, but it won't run Filemaker 8.5 (until December, when a patch will be released for it), although it will run Filemaker 9 (which I don't have) — Tony.

3D Dock from my laptop: