Part four in an occasional series sees me repeating my earlier mantra of ‘it just works’.
So, today we’re learning about spurious screen-dimming, screen savers and an emergency exit…
Mac Tips part 4
Reply
Tag Archives: Apple
Image Capture App
Solved another little Mac problem tonight, so here goes.
A while ago when I plugged my iPhone into my MacBook all was seamless, syncs downloads etc.
Then I got my ‘proper’ camera and installed the EOS utilities on the Mac. All was working fine, but the next time I plugged the iPhone in, I got a little popup dialogue saying there was no camera found.
Silence is golden
It’s been a while since I threw a Mac tip into the mix, so here goes.
A pet-hate of mine is that annoying noise that plays when your machine starts up. Whether it’s a PC or a Mac, I have no idea why someone would think it was a good idea to by default play a sound at startup, or shutdown for that matter.
What is the benefit of that? No, I can’t think of it either.
Strange thing is, on the Mac it’s not something you can easily get rid of. So, other than remembering to mute the sound before shutdown, you’re was stuck with it. Grrrr.
However, after a little bit of digging about, I’ve found a method to stop the startup sound on the Mac without the rest of the sound being muted.
Remove DRM from your iTunes purchases
I like music. I’ve always liked music; all kinds of music. In days gone by, I would spend my spare cash on buying vinyl or things to play it on.
When CDs arrived on the scene, I switched to the new medium and the vinyl was assigned to the loft. I even re-bought some of my old vinyl on CD (you’re welcome guys – double-whammy for you).
When downloads came into play (jeez this makes me sound old) I still continued to buy CDs, because some strange part of me still liked having something solid and tangible in my hand after parting with my cash.
When I finally took the plunge and bought a few individual tracks from iTunes, to fill some gaps on my iPod, all seemed fine. Until I decided to move some of my music onto a little stick MP3 player and I happened upon the problem with Digital Rights Management.
The iTunes-purchased tracks wouldn’t play on my stick drive because it was in iTunes format, not standard MP3…
Snow font problems
Finally! It had all been going too well, so I suppose it had to come; something negative to post about regarding the Mac platform.
I’ve not had the Mac long in the big scheme of things, but up till now, pretty much everything ‘just worked’ which was a welcome relief from Microsoft-land that I know and love.
That was until today, and it was a kinda strange one.
The much hyped Snow Leopard OS came out recently and I decided in my nice shiny world of Mac-iness I’d give it a go to try and keep up with the trends. So I got my nice shrink wrapped package with the nice picture of a… Snow Leopard on it at the weekend.
You need another reason?
You may have seen from previous posts that I’m becoming a bit of a Mac evangelist, but I reckon if something’s good, it’s worth talking about. And I’m talking.
So, as if you needed any more reasons to buy yourself a MacBook, or other Mac model for that matter, here’s another couple for free…
Mac tips part 3
Back on the trail of helpful Mac tips. Just two quickies this time round:
First, I had a CD that wouldn’t eject from my MacBook drive.
It was really stuck; the drive was spinning up and down but nothing in Finder, not even an icon. I was getting an occasional colourful spinning CD mousepointer, but nothing else. Pressing the eject button showed the eject icon on the screen but didn’t actually have any effect.
Not only that, it pretty much ate up the resources preventing starting of other apps etc. or even get to display the dock.
I searched around, and while there were a number of suggestions, none of them worked for this particular disk, but the following did…
Next 5 things for your mac
Hot on the heels of the similarly titled post, I have a few other gems I’ve come across or been pointed towards to make life on the good ship MacBook that little bit more simple. Not that it’s difficult in the first place, just different if you’re used to Windows.
Note: Feedback from the family, who are a mix of casual and regular PC users, would suggest the Mac is easy to use. So fear-ye not Mac virgins, this is not a platform (only) for the uber-geeks.
That said, if you *are* an uber-geek, there’s lots (and I mean lots) to float your boat here.
So, what do we have in the bag this time?
First 10 things to put on your new Mac
As you may heve read from previous posts, and at the risk of boring any regular (aye right!) readers, I got a MacBook a short while back. It’s a bit of a migration for me, having uset a PC for most of my career. I published a list of keyboard shortcuts previously and heres a list of other things I’ve hunted down as ‘essentials’ for day to day work/play.
I know there are alternatives to all of the below, but these are the ones I plumped for. One prevailing factor influenced the choices below; they’re all open source/freeware. My budget for toys is dry following the arrival of the MacBook, so it’s cheapies or freebies for me for a while.
So here goes:
There is indeed an app for that
According to the iPhone adverts, regardless of what you want to do, “there’s an app for that’. Now, I’ve always been a bit cynical to marketing blurb, especially from the big companies. But having had an iPhone for a while now, I can honestly say, I think that claim may actually be pretty close to the truth. There seems to be a limitless number of apps out there to do just about anything.
It’s quite simply the best phone I’ve had. Looks good, nice and slim in the pocket, fantastic UI and the apps, well, that’t where this phone sticks out in front of the rest.
If you don’t have an iPhone, this post will either be of no interest to you at all or may ust convice you to get one.
It already comes with some great apps, like Google Maps But you’re not stuck with just that, of course, there’s a wealth of apps you have to pay for, but in these economic times, let me run through a “Top 5″ of the coolest free apps I’ve downloaded so far…